Cin-posium by Mikel J. Wisler

A Christmas Eve Reflection

2011-12-24T15:23:00.002-05:00

At the end of this summer, I spoke on a Sunday morning at the new church plant I am involved with in Quincy, Massachusetts, called The River. I talked about this word that linguist and The Lord of the Rings author, J. R. R. Tolkien, coined. The word is “eucatastrophe.” It means “good will overcome.” Tolkien coined this word because of his own Christian worldview. If you would like to hear that talk, please check it out here: http://theriversouth.org/sermons/entering-the-third-act-when-all-hope-seems-lost

Wrapped up in the word eucatastrophe is this idea that redemption only comes about by the facing of great obstacles. Tolkien saw the central eucatastrophe of human history as the birth of Christ, what we have taken to celebrating at this time of the year. And for Tolkien, the central eucatastrophe of the life of Christ on Earth was his death and resurrection.

As an artists, Christmas holds a very powerful significance to me. For people like me in the arts and academia who also seek to follow Christ, there is an important and on-going discussion about the mingling in art and life of the “divine” and the “profane.” What I mean by this is that in art, as in pretty much all of life, there really is no clear dividing line between that which is truly sacred and truly profane, or “merely of this world.” Instead, we find eucatastrophe: redemption in the unlikeliest of ways. We find hope in the middle of hopelessness, love in the middle of so much hate, forgiveness where none is deserved, beauty in the ugliest places. Even a quick read through the Bible will show how much grace abounds among those seeking relationship with God despite how profane they are, and just how much God exists in and works through the messiness of life.

Does this mean there is nothing that is profane and nothing that is divine or sacred? Not at all. But it does mean that these two ideas do not exit in complete exclusivity of each other.

What I’m reminded of at Christmas is that the central meeting place of the divine and the profane is in fact in the earthly birth of Christ. What could be more absurd, more profane, than the notion that the son of God would subject himself to being born as a helpless human baby in a dirty stable. What could be more profane than the Creator of the universe being subjected to living out a human life in a world filled with hate. In Jesus, we find the true collision of the divine and the profane. And in the ultimate gesture of obedience to his Father, Jesus brought about the most profoundly beautiful and most despicably profane of eucatastrophies: his death on the cross.

This most basic aspect of the Christian worldview can be easily glossed over with cute stories about baby Jesus. But for me, this gesture on God’s part to directly connect with us even in our broken and profane states informs everything about who I am and how I approach my work a storyteller. I celebrate Christmas as a reminder that God does not shy away from the profane. Instead, he seeks to redeem it. He has and will continue to reach out into our world and our lives to redeem that which is profane, transforming it into something beautiful and true. As an artist, I want to partner in this eucatastrophic work of the divine.

Merry Christmas!

Shooting a Sci-fi Thriller Guerilla Style - Part 2

2011-07-11T15:49:00.003-04:00

As promised in part 1 of this series, I want to explore in more depth the use of Magic Lantern firmware for Canon DSLR cameras as well as Technicolor’s CineStyle specifically designed for use in Canon DSLR cameras. In May, I show a new short film called “Stop.” It is a a sci-fi thriller, and I opted to shoot with a minimal crew and do the cinematography and directing myself. There are new tools that open up new possibilities for DSLR filmmakers. So read on, and find out what I learned about using these tools in conjunction with my Canon T2i.

But first, if you haven’t had a chance to see “Stop,” I want to invite you to take a look at the short film right here for free. It’s only eight minutes, and you will have a much better idea of what I am address as I discuss the shooting process using Magic Lantern and CineStyle.

"Stop" - a Mikel J. Wisler short film

Now that you’ve seen the film, I hope you’ll take a moment to rate and comment on it over on IMDb by going to: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954853/ Honest feedback is welcome! It’s how I learn and grow!

Two exciting things happened as I prepared to shoot this new short film. I was introduced to Magic Lantern and Technicolor’s CineStyle. I had been doing a lot of cinematography for a good year with Canon DSLRs and I wanted to push myself to new level of technical achievement even as I focused on telling an intriguing, fresh, and admittedly complicated story in such as short span of time. I had been experimenting with picture styles for the Canon DSLRs, and had shot a whole short film for director Raz Cunningham back in November of 2010 using the SuperFlat picture style that has been circulating around the web.

The idea of a picture style like SuperFlat is to provide a means to capture as much detail as possible since the camera is going to compress the footage so much in order to save it to CF or SD cards. As a result, when compression kicks in, it can be easy to lose detail information int he shadows or highlights, even when exposure is spot on, and especially if you’re shooting a high contrast scene. But the basic idea is to shoot with as flat of a picture as possible so you can color correct the footage to your heart’s content with as much flexibility as possible given the compressed footage Canon DSLRs generate.

So I chose SuperFlat for Cunningham’s project. And nothing really tells you how well something works like having to shoot with it in real-world situations for several days. In the end, I was overall happy with footage we got, though let down by how SuperFlad seemed screw skin tone a little too much. The detail information is there, but now we’ve got some extra work to do in color correction to make sure skin tone looks right.

Then along came CineStyle, released mere days before we shot “Stop.” In this next video, I explore why I opted for CineStyle, and how that relates to my choice of using Magic Lantern firmware in conjunction with CineStyle.

Magic Lantern is a third party firmware for Canon DSLRs (available for most of the Rebel and pro cameras except the 7D). As mentioned in the video above, it give DSLR cinematographer tools normally available in prosumer video cameras. The fact that Technicolor recommended using CineStyle in ISO 160 or multiples of 160 meant that I could not use CineStyle in its ideal settings on my T2i without using Magic Lantern. And having been interested in experimenting with Magic Lantern anyway, I was happy to take the plunge.

So how does this all work out? Shooting went quite smoothly for the most part. The biggest challenge to using Magic Lantern is that it must be run from the SD cards. So instead of being able to format my SD cards in my T2i, I had to always copy the footage to hard drives on-set (using my MacBook Pro as my DIT machine), and then manually delete the files from the SD card before it could be returned to camera for use. The reason for this is that you must make your SD cards bootable so that when you star your Canon DSLR up, it finds Magic Lantern on the bootable SD card and runs Magic Lantern in conjunction with the native Canon firmware for the camera. If you format the card in camera, it will delete Magic Lantern from it. There’s nothing wrong with doing this and it will not damage your camera at all. It just means you will not be running Magic Lantern. I used three 8 GB SD cards while shooting, so I was never waiting on a card. But it took a little getting used to not formatting my cards in camera.

I only encountered a few bugs using Magic Lantern, and they constantly update it, so lately I have not had issues. Certainly, one feature many shooters appreciate about ML is that it does provide manual audio recording control for cameras like the 5D and T2i, which do not natively have that. Ironically, I prefer to record my audio with my Zoom H1, as it can record a higher bit rates and is made for audio recording, where as the electronics in these DSLRs did not have high-end audio recording in mind. Remember, Canon didn’t really make these cameras for filmmakers, even indie filmmakers.

As for Technicolor’s CinceStyle, I found that It was prone to peaking in the highlights quite quickly. As a rule, I tend to underexpose my DSLR footage a little anyway as they seem prone to clip (that is, he brightest parts of the scene become a white devoid of all detail). I often take exposure readings with a light meter and then double check it against the camera’s light meter. Usually, I will shoot 1/3 to 1/2 stop bellow what the camera thinks is idea exposure. And with Magic Lantern, you have the option of turning on zebras to show you where your highlights are, as well as using false colors to better understand how the camera is exposing the shot. Being a so used to my of the light meter, I used these two option seldom for this particular shoot. And I am quite happy with the results.

Skin tone in CineStyle looks good. The details look great. And I had plenty of flexibility in how I wanted to color correct the footage in post. And that’s a very good thing! Because plans changed mid way through post. Find out why in the video bellow:

Suddenly, with this change in how I wanted the film to look, having as much flexibility with the footage as possible really mattered! In conjunction with this, thanks to fellow producer and lead actor, Trevor C. Duke, who found a great color correction tutorial, I had a better grasp of how to manipulate specific things in each frame as I worked on getting the look I wanted for the film. I made two complete passes of color correction, and the result is what you see in the first video posted.

The tutorial, which is really worth checking out, is here: http://library.creativecow.net/articles/maschwitz_stu/red-giant-blockbuster-film-look/video-tutorial

To find out more about Magic Lantern, go to: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/

I did all of the post production using Final Cut Studio 3. In other words, Final Cut Pro 7, Color, and Soundtrack Pro. This was all before the new FCP X. And in light of what in this humble indie filmmaker’s opinion amounts to some serious oversights on Apple’s part when creating FCP X, I have yet to bother buying the new program and am currently exploring my options for other possible NLEs for future use. One of the things I am saddest to see go is Color. I find it a fantastic program once one learns it (and it does have a steep learning curve for sure, but it is a pro app, that’s to be expected). FCP X seems to have tried to roll some of the tools of Color into it Final Cut. But from all reports, these tools seem to be limited compared to the number of rooms for primary in, secondaries, color effects, geometry, and primary out in Color that allowed me to have such great control over my footage. We’ll see what happens next. For the moment, I’m still cutting in Final Cut Studio 3 and using Color for projects.

But I hope the above information is useful. By all means, if you have questions or comments, please leave them bellow! I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner.

12 Movies that Changed Me

2011-06-12T15:00:00.001-04:00

Recently, I was reflecting on films the have profoundly changed or redefined how I watch movies and approach filmmaking. I thought it would be interesting to assemble a list of the films that have been of most impact for me. So here is a dozen films, and reason why. But being a person that has a hard time making lists of such things, I hesitate to call these the definitive top twelve movies that have changed me. The top six certainly have been of such deep and lasting impact to me that I feel confident in listing them in such high ranks, and have indicated in italics the prime reason I feel they have been of such formative influence on me as a film viewer and filmmaker. There are, of course, a vast number of notable films that did not make it on to this list. That is not to say I haven't found profound value in them. But I thought I would put this out here for discussion and further exploration.

12. Solaris (1972) - pacing, use of environments and sets, visual storytelling.
11. Chinatown (1974) - storytelling, characterization, tragic tale.
10. Blade Runner (1982) - storytelling, use of sets, visual effects.
09. Sherlock Jr. (1924) - early visual effects, visual storytelling, metafiction, early exploration of dream/cinema connection, exceptional comedy.
08. Modern Times (1936) - visual storytelling, comic genius, profound social observation/commentary.
07. Wit (2001 - HBO) - performance, simple yet universal and profound story, profoundly captures the human condition in a unique way.
06. Gattaca (1997) - pacing, character-driven sci-fi, use of environments and sets, use of original soundtrack, storytelling.
05. Adaptation (2002) - metafiction that explores the craft of screenwriting and filmmaking.
04. Children of Men (2006) - cinematography, use of environments and sets, character-driven sci-fi.
03. Casablanca (1942) - storytelling, characterization, exposition and careful and subtle decimation of backstory.
02. The Thin Red Line (1998) - pacing, visual storytelling, editing, visual metaphor characterization and the externalization of the internal lives of characters (when it comes to Terrence Malick, his blending of all these elements is what is so amazing, so all are italicized).
01. In The Bedroom (2001) - crafting an artistic yet utterly realistic experience, pacing, characterization, visual storytelling, tragic tale.

What are films that have profoundly changed the way you think about movies?

Shooting a Sci-fi Thriller Guerilla Style - Part 1

2011-06-10T15:00:00.002-04:00

This past May, I took on the challenge of making a new short film. It had been three years since I last directed a narrative film. I was itching to get back into some of my own creative work. Intrigued by the idea of making a really short film, I took on the challenge of being the director and cinematographer for this new project called “Stop.”

Here is the teaser trailer for the film, which will be released on the web on June 24:

In light of the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of cinematography work these past few years, particularly this past year with DSLR cameras, I felt it was time to get back into the work of telling an original story of my own and incorporate what I’ve been learning. I feel I’ve grown significantly in the last few years when it comes to the craft of lighting, camera placement, and editing. It can be tough as a filmmaker who is always trying to learn new skills and perfect old ones to look back at previous projects now three or four or more years in the past. I’m no longer in the place I was as an artist and a person when I made those films. Now, it’s not that I don’t enjoy those films or find merit in them, its just that in my mind’s eye, they feel dated--like looking at a picture of yourself from several years ago.

So it was high time to take on a new story as writer and director. And while I was at it, I opted to do the cinematography as well. Why? Well, take a look at the two videos below for a little more on that.

Here is a quick look at where the idea for this Sci-fi short came from:

As fellow producer and actor, Trevor C. Duke, and I prepared for this film, we opted to work with a minimal crew. We want to be light and mobile. All the exterior locations were shot with available light, with the occasional flagging or bouncing of sun light for the desired effect. Production took place over two days in early May in New England, so we of course encountered rain and continuously shifting cloud cover and changing sunlight intensity. For the interior scenes, we did light with chinese lanterns, some practicals, and a SourceFour 750w was used outside the window during our night scene.

Here is a glance at the shooting process with such a small crew:

We will be releasing “Stop” on the web for free on June 24, 2011. Please check it out, tell all your friends about it if you like it, and feel free to send me feedback. You can also rate the film and leave comments about it on IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954853/

In my next blog entry I’ll be talking more about shooting this film using Magic Lantern firmware and the new Technicolor CineStyle. In the mean time, you can learn more about “Stop” by visiting the film’s official website: http://stop.mikelwisler.com

Technicolor and DSLR Filmmaking

2011-05-02T13:04:00.005-04:00

In my last post, I talked a little about Canon's announcement that Technicolor would be releasing a custom-made Picture Style for Canon DSLRs specifically designed for HD video shooting. The idea is basically to shoot with a flatter, less contrasty picture setting so as to acquire as much information as possible since the camera will significantly compress the video information before writing it to CF or SD cards. Why do this? So you have as much detail to work with when you are ready to color correct your footage. This is something that much nicer, higher end cameras like the RED cameras, the Arri Alexa, or Arri D21 allow for as they can record or output uncompressed signals.

As I've mentioned before, I have been shooting with similar settings for a while. Specifically, I did all the cinematography for a short film back in November (directed by Raz Cunningham) using the Superflat mode that has been circulating around the Internent. While Superflat did give me plenty of detail to work with, I wasn't happy with what it did with skin tones under certain lighting situations. While the detail level might be great, now we've got even more correction work to deal with just to get our footage to neutral before we push it towards our final look. That's why as of late I have been shooting with my own Picture Style concoction I created using Canon's Picture Style Editor.

Now comes Technicolor's Picture Style just released this past Saturday. So far, my tests with the new Technicolor CineStyle have given me better results. I'll have even more intimate knowledge of how well CineStyle works soon as I will be shooting a short narrative project later this week using the new Technicolor CineStyle. If you want to read more about this new Picture Style and even download it, head over to: http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2011/04/29/technicolor-cinestyle-profile-available-for-canon-5dmkii/

Here is a quick test a friend of mine and very talented DLSR cinematographer, Bryant Naro, shot this weekend using the Technicolor CineStyle on his Canon 7D:

Like I said above, the idea here is to be able to acquire images with as much information or detail as possible. This is by no means a replacement for shooting with better motion picture cameras that can handle raw recording. One of my favorite things about working with footage from the RED One for a project a while back is that I could hop into RED's free program, RED Alert, and quite simply change the ISO of an already recorded file. The information is all there, but if we felt a shot was underexposed, we could actually bring up the ISO and still have a clean, beautiful picture. That certainly is not the case with any DSLR cinematography I've done. And this is just one of many reasons why in regular conversations I have with fellow filmmakers I stress my rather significant reservations about shooting feature films on DSLRs (never mind the fact that 20% of the films at this year's Sundance were DSLR shot).

But, let's face it, we're not all in the position to own or rent cameras like the RED One or Alexa for all of our projects. I am currently engaged in making some bold and fast short films with only the resources readily available to me. Why am I doing this? Two reason: I feel narrative storytelling is a craft I should keep honing and practicing in my pursuit of artistic excellence, and doing such projects provides me new opportunities for potentially creating something great that can be seen by more people and help open up new opportunities for further professional filmmaking. Both of these things have definitely been true of friends of mine who have done what I am doing now.

So, at this present moment, for me, this means shooting with my Canon T2i. Why? Because that's what this broke filmmaker has at his disposal. And tools like Technicolor's CineStyle are certainly very welcome!

I also plan on shooting this new project later this week using Magic Lantern on my T2i. There are several reasons for this. First of all, Technicolor recommends shooting at 160 ISO or a multiple of 160 when using CineStyle. Unfortunately, with Canon's firmware for the T2i, the ISO options are 100, 200, 400, 800, and after that who cares 'cuase it just gets too damn grainy anyway. That means I should in theory only be shooting at ISO 800 if I'm using CineStyle on my T2i. That makes exterior shooting rough, even with my ND filters. So I've opted for Magic Lantern, a third party firmware addition that runs off of SD cards. In addition to giving me many more ISO options, including the 160 multiples recommended for CineStyle, Magic Lantern also gives me many of the functions associated with normal prosumer HD video cameras I am so used to such as zebras, peeking, manual audio, and even different quality settings for the camera's video compression.

If you want to learn more about Magic Lantern, head over to: magiclantern.wikia.com. It is available for the Canon 5D and T2i only at this time. So, 7D, 60D, and T3i shooters are out of luck at the moment.

I plan on blogging more about the process of making this new sci-fi (very) short film as we shoot this week and then enter post-production. So, come on back if you're curious. I will be exploring the ups and downs of working with Technicolor's CineStyle and Magic Lantern.

Canon’s HDSLR News

2011-04-27T15:11:00.001-04:00

Canon recently announced some updates for DSLR filmmakers. You can check out the video bellow if you are curious as to what was said exactly. But the two main things that are of immediate effect are that Canon has released a new E1 plugin for Final Cup Pro for Log and Transfer workflow right from Canon DSLRs. The second is the introduction of a new Picture Style for HD video created by Technicolor for higher detail levels.

Let’s talk about the new Canon E1 plugin for Final Cut Pro first. They supposedly have added more camera support as they have put more cameras on the market. On top of this, they new E1 plugin is supposed to allow editors to Log and Transfer DSLR footage that has not been copied over to hard drives in such a way as to maintain the exact same file structure as the CF or SD card it was originally shot on. This last bit of news is exciting, and I’m interested in putting that to the test, though at this point I’m so used to copying over my SD cards in their entirety to my hard drives that it’s no big deal.

The truth of the matter is that the new E1 plugin only introduces to the mix the newer D-series cameras. In other words, they added the 1D and the 60D to the mix. Wow, thanks Canon ... Sorry for the sarcasm here. But I had already hacked the old E1 plugin anyway so I could Log and Transfer footage from the Canon T2i and T3i. So imagine my surprise when I sat down today to Log and Transfer some footage for a new project I’m shooting and found that the new E1 plugin didn’t allow me to Log and Transfer my T2i footage. What was Canon thinking?

But the good news is the that fix is easy. I just hacked the new E1 plugin like I had done with the old one and was up and running, transcoding footage to ProRes HQ in a few minutes. If you are like me and many, many, many (getting the hint, Canon?), shooter/editors out there who are using any of the Rebel line cameras for projects, you can quickly fix this problem by following the steps in the video I’m posting bellow. This is a tutorial for the original E1 plugin, but I followed these exact steps for the new plugin as well.

Now, about the Technicolor picture style ... This is pretty interesting. I have been shooting with two custom picture styles for HD video for a while now. The idea is that you want to lower contrast and retain as much detail as possible because, lets face it, the compression in these Canon cameras leaves something to be desired. You do this in order to have a much information in your shots as possible so that you can later color correct to your hearts content without quite the same loss of detail or introduction of noise.

There is a Super-flat picture style that has been circulating around the web for a while. It is fairly effective, and I even DPed a short film with it back in November. I’ve since then come to think that Super-flat throws off the white balance of the chip too much for my liking. So these days, I’m shooting with my own flat picture style I created using the Canon Picture Style Editor (for which there is a newer version available on the Canon website).

I am curious, however, to see how this new Technicolor picture style works. You can read more about it here. It is supposed to be release this Saturday, April 30th, 2011. It might be just in time for principle photography for the new short film I’m directing. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Should We Be Waiting for the Scarlet?

2011-04-13T16:04:00.004-04:00

It's been quite a while now since RED announced their 3K prosummer priced Scarlet camera after the very successful introduction of their RED One camera. I've worked with the RED One, and it truly is as amazing as all the hype. That's hard to find in this world. But here we are, three years out from first hearing about plans for the Scarlet and still no sign of it. By all reports, it sounds like the camera is still being worked on. And there are some prototypes out there being used. However, RED has pushed back and pushed back their release date of the camera. They made the choice to delay release and go back to the drawing board to be able to compete with DSLR cameras that can shoot HD video when the Canon 5D Mark II first took off as a new tool for digital cinematographers. Ironically, this might have been the first stept toward the failure of the Scarlet as so much time as gone by, and more HDSLRs continue to hit the market.

I count myself as one who was once in line for a Scarlet, eager to get my hands on one once released. Now ... well, I'm shooting more and more these days on DSLRs. I own a Canon T2i, and while there are loads of limitations to these cameras, its not like any camera is free of limitations or issues. On the other hand, for a fraction of the price of a Scarlet, I can shoot some pretty cinematic material. I'll let this reel I put together speak for itself.

Now certainly, if given the option, I would prefer to shoot most projects on a RED One or Epic. But let's face it, most projects do not have that kind of budget! At this point, most people I know have given up on the Scarlet. There's no point waiting any more. One of three things will happen. Either the Scarlet camera will be abandoned and never released, or the Scarlet will be released but not make nearly the splash RED hoped it would, or they will go to the drawing board yet again and create something new that really blows us away (if Sony, Canon, or Panasonic don't beat them to it first).

The last one, while a possibility, seems unlikely. My gut feeling at this point is that the Scarlet is destined for abandonment. From the perspective of the indie filmmakers that have been hoping to shoot their projects on a Scarlet for the past three years, we'll only believe the Scarlet will be released when we're holding one. And even then ... we might be too busy shooting our films with something else just as good or better.

The evolution of camera technology is happening so fast these days, that delays like the Scarlet has faced, while potentially reasonable, also allow for other companies to seise the opportunity to introduce a new product that pulls the rug out from under a delayed product. HDSLRs have done just this to the Scarlet. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate RED's inovation and the Epic looks absolutely amazing. And when it comes to shooting a feature film, I have to admit I'm quite leery of doing so with HDSLRs. Yet, when on a micro-budgets, we all have to work within our limitations. But as for the race between the Scarlet and Canon for the HDSLR market ... I have to go with Canon as the clear winner. If you want any more details on all of this, I recommend reading: http://www.kurtlancaster.com/dslr-cinema/03/01/2011/why-i-dropped-the-red-scarlet-dream-and-got-a-canon-5d-mark-ii/

And for those who are still skeptical about the image quality of DSLR cameras when compared to higher end cameras like the RED One, I'll leave you with this video:

Video Production Evolution

2011-04-06T11:41:00.007-04:00

It seems like video is everywhere these days. As the Internet evolves, bandwidth speeds increase, more and more companies, organizations, bands, and individuals opt to integrate video into their web presence. For someone like me, where my day job is freelance video production (while I passionately chase my long terms goals as a filmmaker), this is good news. So I was little surprised when a friend sent me a link to an article titled: "Video Postproduction is 'Dying Industry.'" My friend, also a video production professional, wondered what I made of this article. Here's a link to the article, if you're curious: www.governmentvideo.com/article/104614

Here's essentially my reaction ...

I had to read the very end to finally get what the article was saying. And even then, I think I was helped out by some critical thinking skills from college, as the article was not exactly clear. What this article is actually saying is that places that offer strictly post-production facility and services (editing suites and editors and motion graphics animators) are in decline because people like me who are filmmakers and videographer own shooting AND editing gear. In other words, we can do everything without having to go to such a facility.

That is actually ... ANCIENT news. That's been happening for several years now. The very high end places that offer years of professional expertise and expensive editing gear small outfits can't afford, will likely stay alive as long as they evolve with the needs of their clients. But they have already seen declines as far as the kinds of clients they used to draw in as more and more smaller video production companies or individuals have moved to having everything they need for post-production in house. It is just more cost effective. It isn't until you being to deal with large amounts of data-heavy workflows for uncompressed HD, 2K, 4K, or 5K for feature films and TV shows that a large specialized post-production facility starts making sense.

But the truth is, video post-production is alive and well! The article is short and convoluted and really does a lousy job of making its point. Fact is, more people than ever are having videos created for their companies, websites, and organizations. But again, they're going to people like my friend and I who have the gear and experience to do it all from pre-producing, shooting, through editing and delivery.

My friend joked he was having a crises after reading that article. I laughed and went on to explain the this ...

2010 was a record year for me as far as freelance video production work. And the vast majority of the work I did was editing! But here's the thing, I was generally the one shooting or producing what I was then brining into my Final Cut Studio 3 system. So yes, I wasn't going to a big post-production house. I never have, in fact. It just isn't cost effective for the type of video production I tend to do. It makes more sense for me to own my own iMac and Final Cut Studio 3. In fact, I would not make any money if I had to got to a post-production facility. And for the my freelance HD workflows, my iMac cranks along beautifully.

The trends I see from experience and interaction with people is that as more businesses, organizations, bands, non-profit entities, and other such places continue to expand their Internet presence, there is and only will be MORE NEED for video creation. Especially when it comes to professionals that can see a project from start to finish. People are into this one-stop-shop approach, which works great most of the time. It only becomes a problem when some clients ask freelancers to do the job of three people: "Oh, can you shoot, and monitor audio recording, and boom, and do DIT work, and make sure lights are set up at the second locations in advance so we can get there and start shooting right away?" Generally, this is born out of inexperience or lack awareness of what actually goes into professional video production. One person with lots of experience can do quite a bit, but at there are definite limits. At some point, quality is sacrificed in the name of trying to keep things to a one-person crew, which for some projects is not realistic.

On top if this, we also have the DIY phenomena. More people than ever fancy themselves capable of creating professional level videos. Sure, the technology is cheaper now, and if someone really wants to do a weekly video podcast, they can go buy a camera and get iMovie, or Final Cut Express, or Adobe Premiere Elements, or Windows Movie Maker and do that themselves. In fact, I have recommended this exact approach to at least two people who asked me about creating a regular video podcast for them.

Why did I do that? I'm a professional. Video production is what I do. I have to make my day rate or its not worth booking the project because it takes up precious time I can be working on my film career long term goals or doing another gig that will pay me my day rate. On top of that, if such people were to pay me to do their weekly podcast, they would spend a lot of money hiring me to do that week after week. Plus, it's a little video podcast, you don't need a pro to make that. Just learn some basic principles of camera positioning, audio recording, and lighting, and you can create something that's adequate. After all, the quality expectations for video podcasts are pretty low, and the people who were approaching me about doing this didn't have the budgets for hiring pros to create their weekly podcast. Had they been large corporations, it might have been a different story (and potentially worth it for them depending on their marketing approach).

But, what most people are doing is getting sleek and polished, well shot, well edited short videos created for their websites, in house use, or for TV commercials and so forth. These are a totally different ball game that the above mentioned video podcasts. These videos HAVE to be done by pros with experience. That hasn't changed at all.

Of course, some more naive folks out there think they can pick up a camera from BestBuy, shoot something that will be seen as good because they're using an HD camera, edit it on iMovie, and that it's going to be on par with professionally produced videos. That will happen. Eventually, however, most such people realize, "Oh, there's so much more to this professional video creation thing than having an HD camera and an iMac." So yes, digital video gear has come down in price and become more accessible. But that can't replace professional experience, artistic sensibilities, and business savvy required to pre-produce, light, shoot, and edit something that is polished and effective.

Now the area where I do see some change, which is no surprise I should add, is that some organizations that utilize video a lot are making that a department in their structure. That only makes sense from a business perspective, because they can save money that way. But a lot of times, they are only able to get entry level people who do those jobs for entry level pay in order to gain experience. Such people often move on in a few years. So when they need a creative and very professional touch ... they often turn to freelancers with impressive reels and client lists.

Often time, even with companies that might have their own video post-production department, the still need professional videographers with appropriate gear to actually go out and do the shooting for them. I do a good bit of work like this for a few different companies where I pack up my car with my lighting, audio, and camera gear and head out to location where I shoot carefully prepared and lit interviews or live events and then hand off the footage. The company that hired me takes it from there. And this works for everyone concerned. I get my day rate for shooting for them and the next day I'm right back in my office working on either other projects or the feature film I am currently developing. They get a professional with years of experience to shoot good quality footage for them, and then they can save some money by having their in-house editor take it from there. Frankly, I see this as a win-win.

And of course, there as are still plenty of projects and clients that need the complete package from planning through editing. So fellow videographers out there, do not disappear, and do not sell off your editing systems. Yes, I would say the landscape is changing, but I would also say that the article that inspired this whole blog post in the first place does a terrible job of addressing what is actually going on n the video production market these days. After all, the landscape in the world of business and technology is always changing. But as I look into the future, I only see more need for high-impact and expertly produced video content by creative professionals who know how to take the new tools available and put them to great use (sometimes even pushing the limits of what such gear was originally designed to do such has been the case with the HDSLR revolution).

Interview About The River Film Forum

2011-04-04T10:10:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday afternoon, I had the privilege of being a guest on the web radio show “Cultural Diplomacy” by CeaseFireStrategies. Host, Eric Bumpus, asked me to come on to the show so we could chat about the work I’m doing with The River Film Forum. This is a quite an honor, and I had a great time explaining a little bit about what The River Film Forum is all about and what we have been doing as well as some of our plans for the future.

Listen to the interview here: www.ceasefirestrategies.net/2011/04/river-film-forum-mini-interview.html

For those not familiar with The River Film Forum, it is a monthly event where we show a movie and then discuss the film as a group, engaging with the themes, ideas, and worldview of the filmmakers as well as our reactions to the films. It is open to the public; anyone is welcome. The River Film Forum is part of the The River Church, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Check out more information about The River Film Forum on Facebook or by going to: theriversouth.org.

Here is a video I just recently produced for The River Film Forum:

On Making a Director's Reel

2011-03-04T12:54:00.000-05:00

As I dive into developing my first feature film and seek to connect with investors and other potential team members, I have decided to put together a new demo reel that specifically showcases my work in directing narrative film projects. In fact, just this week, this new reel just hit my IMDb profile, along with my Cinematography Reel. Click here to see the reel on IMDb or watch it bellow:

But an important question comes to mind. Are demo reels as effective for directors as they are for cinematographers, editors, and actors?
For the editor and cinematographer, demo reels can quickly show off both technical expertise as well as aesthetic ability to create something with polish and style. For the actor, the demo reel is a quick way to showcase types of roles one has played and glimpse variety and range as well as the type of productions one has been cast in.
But what about the director? I have seen a few reels out there for directors. But it can be a little more tricky. If I'm being honest ... Yes, I did put together a director's reel, and I hope it can be useful for grabbing some people's attention. But does my director's reel really provide a good look at whether or not I have what it takes to carefully and artfully direct a feature film? Probably not.
The truth is, I don't kid myself. If someone really wants to see for themselves if I have any chops as a director, their best best is to actually watch a couple of my short films so they can see the flow of a whole story from start to finish, see how the pacing and choices in camera placement, acting, editing, and so forth all affect the telling of the story. In essence, they need to see a whole film to see the choices of the director and determine if these choices helped or hurt the telling of the story. Only in doing this can someone ultimately figure out if a given director has talent. I'm no exception!
Another perspective is that often trailers for one's films are a better attention grabber than a demo reel when it comes to one's work as a director. I certainly see the point here, and this why I do have a Trailer Reel page on my website. In fact, as far as grabbing people's attention and gaining their interest in seeing more of my work, I would say, trailers are probably far more affective than a demo reel.
Here's a trailer for my short film, "Always Reaching," for example.

So why do I have a director's reel? Because, in the words of a good friend of mine, "it can't hurt." In this day and age, it is best to have multiple means by which people can be introduced to your work. It took me very little time to put together my director's reel and having another tool in my arsenal is helpful. So basically, why not have one? It's all about trying to make a good first impression.
In the end, my hope is that people who are genuinely intrigued by my trailers or demo reel will take a crack at watching one of my films. Especially if they are considering whether or not I might be worth the investment when it comes to funding a feature film. I would hope they make an informed decision.

Micro Budget Features and Film Festivals

2011-02-27T17:05:00.011-05:00

Probably one of the most daunting things any independent filmmaker has to deal with is finding funding for projects. This is why many new filmmakers opt to make what I would call micro budget features (films with production budgets in the tens of thousands). I've done several short films to date, and all of those have been projects that my fellow producer Andrew Gilbert and I have funded ourselves. I would definitely classify them as micro budget shorts. But you can do that with short films. Most often the main expenses are some rented gear, a location or two, and food. Everything else is either borrowed, donated, or deferred. In our case, we've done a lot of deferred deals with cast and crew looking to gain more experience in filmmaking. In those cases, the act of being involved in the project tends to be payment enough with the added bonus that should the film manage to turn a profit, there could be some payment down the road.

But what about feature films? Can you do this with features?

It is definitely possible. Any indie filmmaker can list off films like The Blair Witch Project, Clerks, El Mariachi, Primer, and others. The last such film to supposedly pull off being produced on a micro budget fit maybe for a short film is Monsters. It is also probably the freshest take on the ultra-low budget movie as the film's writer and director, Gareth Edwards, skillfully crafted a story that played to the strengths of such a limited budget and circumvented many (though not all) of its weaknesses. But actually getting a straight answer on what the budget really was on such films can be hard. For Monsters, I heard while attending the American Film Market (AFM) in November that the film was reportedly produced for $10,000. NJ.com says $15,000. IMDb lists the estimated budget at $800.000. Clearly, there's some discrepancies here. It could be that much work was done on deferred payments, meaning that the film's actual budget is closer to to $800,000 when everyone actually gets the money they're owed for the work they did, while money actually spent during preproduction, shooting, and cutting the film might be much closer to the $15,000 mark. So what's the actual budget of the film?

There's a temptation for the indie filmmaker to say, "Well, clearly it's the ten or fifteen thousand spend while shooting and editing." I'm right there with you. I want to believe this is true too. After all, it's the money spent, right? But it is not that simple. Investors may not agree with this perspective. Even your cast and crew might not see it like this. It all depends how contracts were arranged for deferred payment for the cast and crew that agreed to work on the film for little or no money up front in hopes of getting money later. Do they get their money once the film is sold to a distributor? Do they have to wait for the film to turn a net profit once a distributor releases the film? Whose definition of net profit will they go by?

The investor wants to make as much money off of this investment as possible. Your crew and cast that worked for deferred payment are hoping to get a good payout from this (possibly a better payout than had they been paid up-front). Lets say you make a movie that costs $15,000 to make. But you sign deferred payment contracts with the cast and crew that states that once the film is sold to a distributor, they will get paid. And lets say that once all those people are paid, that will actually make the budget of the film $800,000. But you are proudly bragging about your $15,000 feature film, which distributors pick up on and decide that they can offer you $400,000 and it will look to you like a huge win. But, in reality, you're actually significantly in the red! You cannot pay in full on all the deferred payments you are under contractual obligation to pay. And your investor is empty handed, having actually lost all $15,000 of his or her original investment.

Now, not all contracts for deferred payment are structured this way. In fact, most investors will insist that there be clear language in the contracts that makes it certain that the investor will first recover his or her investment before any deferred payments are made. But even in the above scenario, your cast and crew would not get the money they hoped to get if the movie had been sold for $1 Million. I'm just trying to make a point here. Clearly this micro-budget business is in fact a little more complicated than at first glance.

The tricky business with these low-budget-sweethearts is that often times hyperbole drives the marketing. So while it's quite possible that a film like Monsters was in fact made for an initial cost of $10,000 to $15,000, there's also a very good chance that film actually cost significantly more than this to be made, but clever marketing likes to play that number as lower to drive curiosity and tap into the ever-present American fixation on the "underdog story." So, in a sense, the film itself becomes an underdog we want to cheer for and see succeed.

Now, I don't mean to say that there aren't indie feature films made for micro budgets like this. Such movies are made. In fact, judging from the many e-mails about micro-budget features looking for cast and crew I get each week from various networks I'm associated with as an indie filmmaker, there are a lot of micro budget features being made. It's just that hardly any of them go on to enjoy the kind of success that the above mentioned movies have enjoyed. It's a tough gig for sure. There's probably a better chance of the producers of such a film winning the lottery than actually getting such a film to be a run-away hit. But at the same time, not all producers of such films are looking to make a runaway hit. They just want a good solid feature film under their belt they can take to festivals and maybe get a DVD deal and enough niche attention that will help pave the way for the next, bigger budget feature. I'm definitely on board with that ... if the script is any good.

Those looking for the runaway hit, while their passion and dreams are admirable, are most likely in for heartbreak. Chances aren't good. In fact, they've never been worse. Since Primer, the film festival environment has been in flux. These past years of financial turmoil and the increasing use of the label "indie" by the studios as a genre (not as a business term indicating the film was funded independently of major studios) have brought some serious changes to the film festival landscape.

What does this mean for indie filmmakers like us? Want to get some attention at Sundance Film Festival these days? You better have some highly marketable house-hold names in your cast, or be a highly marketable house-hold name filmmaker yourself. I suspect, though I may be wrong, that the days of a feature film with no stars that was made for a few thousand dollars getting huge recognition from a festival like Sundance have come and gone (and likely to not be coming back too soon, sadly). What's more, I've heard it again and again: Distributors are no longer attending festivals. Distribution deals are not being made at festivals all that often any more. Why? Distributors are flooded with inquires as is. They do not need to go looking for more, most of the time.

Now, I don't mean to be all doom and gloom here. I'm merely making some observations. The truth is, there are also many new means of distributing movies these days. For our short films "Always Reaching" and "Cold October," we've definitely tapped into such new distribution means as Indie Media Entertainment and IndieFlix. Both films can be inexpensively rented as VOD in very good quality and "Cold October" is currently available on DVD through IndieFlix. That's just two examples!

New developments in the distribution of independently produced films continues each year. With more opportunities for filmmakers to make a low budget feature and find independent distribution through the Internet, the viability of making a micro budget feature and having it actually be seen by people and possibly even make back its money and maybe even turn a profit is within reach of more filmmakers than ever. Will we hit the big time doing this? Probably not. But can we possibly show our storytelling skills and build solid footing for the next step to a bigger budget feature? I sure think so!

The other question I feel I must ask, and I do not know the answer to this at this time, is this: In light of all this change in the film festival world, new distribution opportunities, and the fact distributors by and large don not seem to be going to festivals ... are festivals still relevant to new indie filmmakers seeking to get that first or second feature film out there? Or are all those submission fees wasted money? What do you think?

Cliches and Lazy Filmmaking

2011-02-17T11:55:00.001-05:00

Recently, I was drawn into a conversation with a friend about this idea of “cinematic shortcuts” or “film cliches.” These are some highly visual devices used in storytelling in movies and on TV fairly often. Like all cliches, they were at some point effective in communicating an idea. But now they have been over-used. And savvy audiences roll their eyes and grow tired of seeing these cliches time and again.

Want an example? A couple in a movie gets into a fight. As the fight reaches its climax, they storm off to separate rooms and slam doors. Cliche. How many times have we seen people slam doors in movies? Sometimes it can have its place, especially if the filmmaker works out a way to make this not a cliche but something new and fresh because of how its playing out on screen.

Another classic cliche of the action movie is the crashing vehicle that blows up into a big ball of flames as if the entire body of the car had in fact been made out of C4. Its visual, it’s cool looking. So I get it. I understand the temptation to do this. But we’ve seen this now so many times that it has in fact lost its impact.

But what I really want to explore here are the unique cliches that I would suggest become cinematic shortcuts because they are visual means of conveying a deeper idea, but they have also been over-used. My objective as a filmmaker is to find fresh and creative ways to communicate without the use of cliche or tired shortcuts. But to do this, I need to first figure out what are cliches and how they have been used.

The Kiss

The first one that comes to mind for me is kissing. We see it in movies all the time. And there’s a reason for this. It is visual, which works perfectly on-screen. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of a good movies kiss!

But often characters kissing is used a a shortcut for showing that they are attracted to each other or that they are now in a relationship. I’ve seen it in many movies, and often feel like it looses its power and impact because too often it feels like a shortcut, like lazy storytelling. Could there be another way to get the same idea across, even a very visual way, without it having to be the stereotypical kiss?

Now, if you build up, and the kiss in your film becomes a true moment of catharsis, a release of emotion as we’ve been waiting for these two characters we know are in love with each other to finally and openly express their love, then the kiss has its power again. Though here to we have to be careful. Far too many movies have also relied on a big emotional kiss at the climax of the movie where the music swells and the lover embrace. So, obviously, it becomes a question of how unique and fresh the story is over-all. Can we make such a scene with a new sense of life and excitement, or will it feel like a rip-off of dozens of over films with the same climatic kiss scene?

Throw It Out

Another shortcut I’ve seen a lot in TV shows and movies goes something like this: Man is in love with woman. He plans to propose to her. At what feels like the right moment to him, he pulls out the ring box and pops the question. But woman, while professing her love for him, breaks his heart and says no. They part ways, because how could their relationship remain the same now? In his heart-broken state, needing to move on, the man stands near a body of water. He takes ring box and throws it out into the water. Splash. The ring, and with it, the relationship is gone.

It’s visual, right? Absolutely. In fact, the above scene I just described is directly from a recent episode of the TV show Bones. As I watched it, and I saw the character look at this ring box post break-up, I began to mutter something along the lines of, “Oh no. Don’t do it. I feel a cliche coming. Oh. There it is. There it goes. Damn it! Had to go for the cliche, didn’t they?”

This type of scene takes on many forms, but specifically the throwing out of a engagement ring is quite common. The trouble is, often times the characters that perform these acts don’t strike me as the types that would do this. In all other areas of their life they seem to behave pretty pragmatically. This is certainly the case with the above mentioned character from Bones. So suddenly to toss this expensive and powerful item out seems a wee-bit melodramatic for an otherwise level-headed character. In other words: out of character. But I get it. It’s a visual shortcut. A quick way to show that this is definitively the end of this relationship. Nonetheless, I feel it is lazy writing.

Another manifestation of this type of scene is one where a character is angry with another character who calls them on their cell phone. And what do they do? They throw their cell phone over a cliff, or into a poll, or off the peer. Again, it’s visual. I get it. But I guess the beauty of being a fictional character is that you don’t have to be concerned about buying a new cell phone and making sure you get all those phone numbers and contact information off the old phone you just tossed off that boat or into the deep-end of the pool and into a new phone.

Sometimes this scene is about freedom. A character chooses to divorce themselves from their workaholic life, even if just for a while, and so they toss that ever-ringing phone. Again, great visual picture. I understand why movies have used scenes like this in the past. But I’ve seen it too many times now. So I’m hesitant to use it in my own films.

Sex

The final cinematic shortcut I want to address today is sex. Lets take a moment and acknowledge that movies and sex are pretty good fit in many ways. Let’s face it, movies and TV are visual mediums, and what could be more visual than sex, right? And contrary to what some of my Christian friends might suggest, I do believe there is a proper place, use, and context for on-screen sexuality. But our topic today is how sex has become a movie cliche, so I won’t get into that right now.

Two characters are in love. Their relationship is becoming more intimate. So how do we show that? How do we show they’re really in-love? Or that their relationship is moving into deeper waters? Here comes the sex scene.

Again, I get it. And in some movies it makes perfect sense that this would be the next natural action the characters might take. But in a lot of movies, its a lazy, lazy, lazy shortcut. It is a means for quickly trying to say, “See, they’re really in love.” Two characters meet at the start of the movie. They flirt right away. Fifteen minutes into the movie, they’ve kissed. And before the end of the first act, they’ve slept together. And what’s more, these people who have only known each other a short while, somehow seem to manage having mind-blowing and amazing sex. They seem to innately know how to perfectly please their partner. Yeah right. My BS detector just went off the charts just now.

Things like this sure look like lazy storytelling to me. The challenge I embrace for my own writing is to seek out other means of showing that two people are in fact growing closer together. What other visual means can I come up with to communicate the idea that they are becoming more vulnerable with each other? That they are becoming more committed to each other? It is my drive and hope to do something new and fresh, not just come up with an excuse for another sex scene.

What Else?

So what other cinematic shortcuts or movie cliches do you see? What do you try to avoid in your own storytelling? Or what just bugs you when you see it in a movie? Feel free to share. Who knows, I might have to write a follow-up blog entry with some of the most notable examples.

My New Cinematography Reel for 2011

2011-02-11T11:43:00.003-05:00

2010 was a great year for me where I got to do a lot of new, challenging, and exciting cinematography work. So I wanted to take a moment share here my latest demo reel for such work. For those of you who have been following this blog, you've seen my entries on shooting narrative films with the Canon 7D and T2i. Here, you can see some footage from those projects as well as some other projects I'm sure I'll be writing about soon as well.

Favorite Video Projects of 2010

2011-02-04T15:08:00.003-05:00

2010 was busy year for me on the freelance video production side of things. It was also a year new things both in terms of types of videos and in terms of starting to shoot a lot of material on DSLR cameras. Here's a quick look through some highlights of projects I worked on in 2010 in my freelance video work.

The River Church:

I created four short videos for the River Church's website. This has to be the most aesthetically unique video project I did in 2010 as it used several distinct techniques ranging an all DSLR shoot to video rear projection during the interview shoot. You'll also notice that we went for a very film-like look in both the colors, film reel transitions, and the 2.35:1 wide aspect ratio more reminiscent of big action or cinematic films. Bellow you can see the first of the four videos. To see all four, head over to www.theriversouth.org.

Shot with two Canon Rebel T2i cameras.

The Back Bay Hotel in Boston:

I created a short video for the Back Bay Hotel this past year. This too was entirely shot with DSLR and is featured on Citysearch.com. I did all the sooting and editing.

Shot with two Canon Rebel T2i cameras.

AOL Travel Boston:

This series of short videos for AOL Travel's new website was shot all over Boston, all using the Canon Rebel T2i. My thanks to host Matt Rodrigues, sound recordist Mike Lamantia Jr. and producer Raz Cunningham! I did the shooting and editing.

Click here to see the rest of the videos.

AOL Stylelist: Hot In My Salon Episodes:

I shot and supervised the editing of two episodes for the Stylist web series, Hot in My Salon. This was all shot run-and-gun documentary style with my Sony HDR-FX1 camera.

Westwood Patch:

As AOL rolls out new specialized websites in their Patch brand, they hired me to shoot videos for two of the area editors for specific Patch websites. I created videos for Westwood and Brookline, Massachusetts, this past summer. Both videos were shot with the Canon Rebel T2i.

There is definitely other material I shot this past year, specifically for narrative film projects, that I wish I could include here at this time. However, those projects are currently in post-production and will be rolled out some time later this year. And when they are rolled out, rest assured I will put some samples here as they do represent serious new achievements in my own work as a cinematographer.

Thank you to all my clients this past year. Here's to a great 2011!

The River Film Forum

2011-01-15T16:09:00.013-05:00

As 2011 begins, I find myself in an exciting and unique position of being able to help run a program that feels unique, new, and sort of throws out some old conventional ideas of what it means to be a follower of Christ (or in the more common terms, one of them church-going folk). For the last portion of 2010, I helped launch and lead something called The River Film Forum, hosted by The River Church (www.theriversouth.org) in Quincy, Massachusetts. We gather once a month, pop some popcorn, and watch a movie. When the movie's done, we hang out and discuss the film as a group, reacting to what we've just experienced. Some very exciting things have been happening with all of this, and I have some very high hopes for 2011's full year of Film Forums.

This is open to the public, so if you are in the south shore area of Boston, please do no hesitate to contact me. We meet the third Friday of every month. You can look us up on Facebook and keep up with the latest news and information about the movies we're watching and other special events we're planning. The film forum is geared at encouraging open dialogue about life's big questions through the shared experience of watching movies and talking about the ideas and issues brought up in films. This is open to anyone interested, you don't have to be part of our church, or any church. This is about appreciating film and making friends through fun and constructive conversations.

Films we have screened and discussed so far include: The Book of Eli, Bruce Almighty, The Matrix, Dan in Real Life, and The Family Man. We kick off the new year of RFF films on January 21st with Inception, followed in February by The Social Network.

As a film lover, this is a dream come true being able to help share a deep appreciate for cinema with others. As a filmmaker, this is highly educational as every time we have a film forum discussion I learn a lot about how other people watch and think about films. As a Christian, I find it fascinating how profound and real (removed from the realm of esoteric platitudes) our discussions of the films we watch are each time.

Along those lines, I'm tinkering with some ideas for writing about this film forum experience some more and explore how this is all working. Things are slowly developing with that, but only time will tell how that shapes up. In the mean time, we've got our year essentially planned out, and we'll be introducing some exciting new things to the film forum this year, including an exclusive screening of an independent film in March.

If you're curious about what this whole film forum thing entails, I've written a brief explanation on The River Church's website: www.theriversouth.org/classes-programs/river-film-forum.

Distribution for My Lastest Short Films

2010-12-03T17:46:00.008-05:00

Just released in the United States today by Indie Media Entertainment, my award-winning (Best Screenplay at Terror Film Festival) psychological thriller short film, "Cold October," and my dark and dramatic short film "Always Reaching" are now available as VOD (Video on Demand) on-line streaming rentals. For "Always Reaching," this is the first release of the film. It has played in festivals and had special on-line test screenings, but has not been made widely available to the public until today.

In the coming weeks, Indie Media Entertainment will also be releasing both films on DVD through Amazon.com and as VOD available on TiVo. The exact release date for the DVDs and the TiVo VODs are still to be determined.

To rent "Cold October" on VOD today, go to:

coldoctober.watchime.com.

To rent "Always Reaching" on VOD today, go to:

alwaysreaching.watchime.com.

I invite you to check the films out. Your support is deeply appreciated! If you happen to have followed my sporadic blogging, you understand that filmmaking is a profound passion and dream of mine. I cannot fulfill this dream with out the support of all the amazing people who have contributed to the making of these films and all the scores of other people who support my efforts by renting and buying copies of my films. I also rely on word of mouth from people who enjoy my films to get the word out there to other people who I just cannot reach otherwise. So please, pass along these links to any of your friends or family!

Thank you,

Mikel J. Wisler

co-writer and director of "Cold October" and "Always Reaching"

Is Your Movie Ticket a Vote for Lousy Cinema?

2010-06-29T23:35:00.007-04:00

Summer movie season is upon us again. And, as has been the case off and on in years past, I find myself almost paralyzed with boredom by the offering of films this year. Yeah, sure, there’s a few movies that look interesting, and even a couple that look definitely worthwhile. But the majority of films coming out this summer have little appeal to me, or at least don’t seem worth paying the price of a first run movie theater ticket to see them. Now that’s just my opinion.

All the same, if you watch movies at all, and most Americans do, you’ve seen your fair share of films you found disappointing. What’s more, I’m positive you’ve seen trailers to films and have thought something along the lines of: “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe THAT got made! Why would I ever waste time watching that?”

So, let’s explore a couple of theories about why bad films get made. Well, these are really two ideas that combine in my view to form a sort of market driven theory of bad cinema.

The first idea is something you may have read on this blog before. It’s simple really. It’s more of an observation than a theory. It is the idea that basically something along the lines of 80% of anything produced in large quantity is lousy. Now, obviously, this doesn’t apply to a specific item, like a particular model of automobile. But when it comes to unique items, especially things that involve a lot of creativity, talent, and good taste, most such things miss the mark of excellence. Consider the number of books in any book store. Are even 50% of those books something you might consider worth the time it would take to read them? Chances are no. In fact, the actual percentage is probably far lower!

You can say the same about music, works of art, TV shows, video games, oratory presentations, and movies. It seems, to me at least, that this is the case particularly when it comes to the types of things that are significantly dominated by industry. Once the focus shifts away from mere creativity and more strongly to making money, I think there’s a definite increase in lousy creative choices made by the people seeking to create such works, especially when such works involve not just one person, but a committee of people. In the studio system in Hollywood, where money is definitely a major concern ... correction, 99% of the time it is THE concern ... this is a significant issue.

So yes, I do think that a natural byproduct of the film “industry” is that honestly most films made are actually quite lousy. Now, I feel I must point out I’m not some sort of artsy-fartsy avant-garde guy who only likes movies that look like David Lynch’s Eraserhead. On the contrary, I’m a firm believer in the intersection of art and pop culture. Most of what we admire as great classic works of art now where once in fact part of the popular culture of its day. So, I definitely don’t want to sound like I’m poo-pooing all forms of popular expressions of art.

Now, having said that ... most film trailers I see do seem to land in the category of films I’ll never bother to watch. And I watch a lot of films (admittedly, I watch a lot of trailers too). In my view, most movies are this way not because I have an insanely and unreasonably discriminating taste in films, but because most are genuinely not that good. It’s part of my theory here that at least 80% of all movies are just frankly ... not that good.

Now, I should point out again, I am a film lover! The five to ten percent of films that come out each year that I greatly enjoy make it all worthwhile for me. They are gems worth seeking after! So, as I’ve said before, just because 80% of the offering of a particular medium are lousy, this does not mean we should abandon that medium. That’s like saying that because so few paintings can be “Starry Night,” we should as a society give up on painting as an art form. Absolutely not!

Now, if at least 80% of films aren’t good, then is all hope lost that more films can’t be better? Are we doomed to having at best only 20% (keep in mind these are just rough round numbers) of all films that good, with an even smaller percentage of those that are truly great?

I want to say no.

Which leads me to my second theory. If the film industry is in fact an industry, it does indeed concern itself significantly (even primarily) with making money, then what kinds of movies make money clearly must affect the subsequent kinds of movies that will get made in the future.

Just think about it: Say I own a business--a restaurant. I make pizza. But my pizza isn’t very good. Obviously business is not going well. But now, say I discover that instead of pizza, my cooks are excellent at making magnificent chocolate cake. In fact, the chocolate cake they make is just out of this world fantastic. We start serving it at my restaurant. People rave and start coming in just to get some cake. It would be completely foolish of me to insist on being a pizza joint that just happens to make excellent cake and continue to only make a few cakes each day. My business will do much better if I make the switch to focusing on cakes and get the word out about this, not my pizza. In fact, I bet my cooks that make great chocolate cake also make other amazing cakes as well. And if it’s what people want, I stand to make a significantly better profit than I ever could selling second rate pizza. You see where I’m going?

So we have two key factors: what people want, and how well I can deliver that.

Now imagine if I make lousy pizza at my fictional restaurant but for some reason people in my neighborhood keep buying it. What motivation do I have to change? None. My system works. I mean, even if in theory I could make more money selling cake, is that a risk I’m willing to take when my crappy pizza is doing just fine? I think you know the choice most businesses will make in a scenario like this.

Hollywood is no different.

So here’s the part where we can come in to the system and actually have an affect. Business is predicated on people paying for something (a service, a good, a ... you get it). In the case of theatrical films ... paying for movie tickets. In particular, studios are quite concerned with opening weekend box office. In fact, the obsession with opening weekend box office is so big that studio executives in Los Angeles will hold their breath as a large scale and very expensive film that needs to sell hundreds of thousands of tickets to actually make a profit opens on the East Coast. With anticipation, they watch ticket sales in those first few hours of Friday evening on the East Coast. By the time it’s eight or nine that night in New York City (that first day of the film’s opening), a film can be declared a failure. That means, before the clock strikes 6:00 PM in LA, the film can be considered already a flop.

Movies that don’t fare well that first and second weekend run the risk of being pulled from theaters in subsequent weeks. Why? Well, theater owners need to make way for other potentially more profitable films. If a film isn’t bringing in an audience, theater owners are going to want to put something on that screen that will draw an audience. Simple economics, really!

But when a film is brining in loads of people each week, that’s a film sure to keep playing. As long a its selling tickets, no theater wants to get rid of it. Now, there are those rare films that manage to even gain more theatrical distribution because theaters showing a particular film keep selling out and other multiplex theaters want a piece of that pie! They might start slow and only play in a few theaters, but if ticket sales suddenly jump, good things can happen for that film. Along with great review and the all illusive but so powerful “good-word-of-mouth,” a film that starts humbly on only a few screens can grow to national distribution. This happened with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But, before we get all excited about that, we have to note that these films are the definite exception to the rule. They’re not just rare. They’re practically unheard of.

Lets take a normal Hollywood summer film. An action film. It manages to do well, it makes good money. And maybe it deserves it. Maybe it was quite entertaining and even intelligent. It deserves its success. The people who created this film, or at lease financed it, are going to be pleased. And of course, they’d like to repeat that! So they want to take what they believe worked about that film and they’re going to want to repeat that. But not just them ... other people in the industry will want to as well. Especially when a film is a really big success.

This is how trends get started. What’s hot right now? Vampires. Just look at Twilight and True Blood. So along comes ABC with their carbon copy, The Gates. Only ... the thing about carbon copies is that they’re never as good as the original.* That is not to say that seizing what works about a particular film and seeking to make more films that contain those winning qualities is a bad idea. It’s about how it is done. In other words, instead of just trying to make “another Dark Knight,” filmmakers (and audiences) are better served trying to identify the things that have drawn such audiences in to that particular film in the first place. What got them to tell all their friends to go see it the following weekend, and the weekend after that. What is it that actually drives people watch a movie and then the next week drop what their doing and actually pay full price to see it again (I think the last movie I did this with was Children of Men). A more careful analysis is required to figure these things out. And I suspect that ultimately you can’t just look at one film, but what is working for several films. Then try to see what’s the common themes or elements that might be connecting so well with audiences.

This is a lot of work, for sure. But the results can be very worthwhile. In the end, the filmmaker can walk away understanding what audiences are drawn to and why it might be worth while making something new that taps into those elements.

But, really, most often we end up with a diluted product. If it flops, the trend is dead. If it succeeds, however, the trend lives on, possibly growing even stronger.

In other words, there are plenty of movies that come out each year (often sequels to movies I thought were a waste of time the first time around) that are just diluted junk. But as long as there are people willing to pay good money to go see the movies in large enough numbers, such movies keep being made. If I had the space here, I might even explore the idea that too often young audiences just like what they’re told to like by clever marketing.

But what I am focused on here is this: when you buy a ticket for a movie it is in fact a way of casting a vote. That vote in essence is saying, “Yes, make more movies like this. I’m willing to pay to see movies like this.”

Now, the flip side of that is true as well. Don’t bother to go see a film, and its a way--in principle at least--of saying, “No, don’t waste any more time or money on stuff like that. I’m not interested.”

Uh-oh. Does that suddenly add some weightiness to our movie going habits? Well, maybe it should.

Now to what degree, that’s something no one can determine for you. That’s a matter of personal taste and conscious choice. Of course, keep in mind that sometimes you’re going to buy a ticket to see a film, and it will turn out to be a huge disappointment because the film appeared genuinely good when you saw a trailer or a friend told you about it. But upon watching it you find it is in fact quite a hackneyed second rate movie. That’s a risk you take when you buy a movie ticket. But really, that’s a risk you take with any purchase.

But again, how much should we be thinking of our movie ticket purchase as a vote? I argue that this type of thinking should factor in for those of us who do make it a regular part of our lives to head out to a movie on a weekend. After all, if we don’t particularly like the films being offered to us, but we shell out the money to see those films anyway ... we are helping to perpetuate the creation of more lousy films. We really have no one else to blame, folks.

Again, the flips side of this is so very true as well. We might hear of a film that looks like exactly the type of thing we’d really enjoy seeing. But maybe it’s a film with a more limited release and not as big of a marketing budget as many other films offered to us by the large studios. And we think to ourselves, “Oh, I’d like to see that.” But the movie comes out, and we’re busy, and we forget, and the next weekend, we don’t get around to it ... and before we know it, it’s gone. It’s no longer playing in any local theaters. Not enough people went to see it, and the local theater dropped it in favor of something that will sell more tickets and popcorn. It’s a blip on the radar. Forgotten almost instantly by the film industry.

Why is this? Well, that’s because the industry is still primarily concerned with first run box office receipts. Which means that while some movies do take off and have a great life in home video form as rental and/or sales, the big money the industry is really looking at is box office, and specifically that opening weekend.

I also hear periodically form people something along the lines of, “Oh that movie looks really good. Maybe I’ll go watch it when it hits the ‘dollar theater.’” Now, for those of you who don’t know what a “dollar theater” is, that’s a theater that plays what is referred to in the film industry as “second run films.” These are films that have already had their shot at first run, full price theaters, and are now being shown (usually months later) for a significant discount (it used to be a dollar, but few places actually charge only one dollar these days). The city I live in now used to have such a theater. It went out of business long before I moved here. Too bad, because I really do like going the movies and spending less money.

Which brings up a good point. I, just like anyone else, want a good bargain! We all need to save money. We all need to choose what is a priority and was isn’t as far as what we’re willing to pay for. And for many movies, seeing it in a “second run theater” or renting it on DVD is probably a good idea. I don’t want anyone to think I’m not advocating frugality. Like I said, most of what comes out isn’t all that great anyway, and if you think it might end up just being “okay at best” instead of “fantastic,” than you’re better off waiting to see it when its cheaper to do so. That is in fact a very smart move!

But here’s the lesson: When we do head out and catch that brand new movie that’s coming out this weekend, or maybe just came out last weekend, do we ever think beyond the next two hours and ten or fifteen dollars of our lives?

I often hear people complain about how many lousy movies come out each year. But when I ask them if they went to see a particular film that is something I know they would greatly enjoy (even a film I know they expressed interest in seeing), the answer is too often ... no. Worse yet, they end saying something like, “Oh, that looks great! I really want to see it. Can’t wait to rent it.”

And I cringe a little when I hear this. I want to scream, “Do you realize that you and everyone else making that same choice is essentially ensuring that fewer films like this will get made? You want better films to come out, but then when they do, you don’t go see them! Meanwhile, movies like the Saw franchise keep making money. So that’s what keeps getting made and shown in theaters, while fantastic and profound films continue to just fall by the wayside!”

Pardon my passion here. But beautiful and profound cinema is something I am passionate about. I think it is something very worthwhile. And it honestly hurts me to see spectacular films like Levity or The New World or Brokedown Palace or Rabbit-Proof Fence fall by the wayside when they could at least be significantly helped out by attentive film audiences making the choice to go watch such films in first run theaters instead of watching the new big studio sequel. Now granted, with some of these films, the distribution companies are as much at fault as any of us when they fail to mount an appropriate marketing strategy. This is one reason why I think Terrence Malick’s fantastic film, The New World, did so poorly. I know people who went to see it thinking it would be an action movie, not a beautifully introspective film. But, unfortunately, a discussion of lousy marketing is not what we’re engaged in here. Maybe a some other time.

If cinema is something we value (and I assume you do or you wouldn’t be reading this ridiculously long blog entry), than we have to be ready at times to put our money where our mouth is. Am I advocating we not be frugal? Again. No! But what I am advocating is that we think more clearly about our box office choices. I for one am sick of movie remakes of things I didn’t really think were that great to begin with. So I’m not heading out to the theaters this summer to see The A-Team.

I am, however, utterly excited about buying my opening night ticket to go see Inception. Is it guaranteed to be an amazing film? No. But everything I’ve seen and heard about it leads me to believe that this is a gamble well worth taking.

-- -- -- --

End Notes:

*Here’s where I add my own two cents and declare Twilight a carbon copy of a much more interesting romance between and girl and a vampire ... Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean, come on. She’s not just a girl in love with a vampire. She’s the flipppin slayer! But that’s just my nerdy two cents.

7D and T2i Cinematography

2010-05-14T13:52:00.016-04:00

Okay, let’s talk narrative filmmaking with these new DSLR cameras. You may be hearing a lot about the great video capabilities of DSLR video cameras like the Canon 5D, 7D and T2i (aka 550D in the Rebel line), as well as such cameras from Nikon and Panasonic. But how do these cameras really perform when it comes to the careful art of cinematography?

In January, I directed a short documentary project produced by Bryan Felty (Good Bones Productions). Felty and I both agreed we that we wanted a definitively cinematic look for the project. Four factors played into our camera selection: HD, 24p, Depth of Field, and cost. And so we landed on the Canon 7D. I hired a couple of shooters I’ve worked with before, David Kruta and Jeff Melanson. We used two Canon 7Ds for duel camera coverage for the interview and b-roll. I was extremely impressed with the 7D, and it wasn’t long before I was on the prowl for my own HD video capable DSLR.

I have not worked with the Nikon or Panasonic cameras yet. I have heard good things about the Panasonic models. But Nikon ... I’m sorry, Nikon. I loved shooting still with Nikons. But when it comes to HD video, Nikon is at least two years behind Canon, which clearly is leading the way in this particular technology. The main shortcomings: Max resolution of 720p at 24 fps, no manual control over exposure in video mode, and serious complaints of rolling shutter issues. I was actually considering a Nikon DSLR to use for video until I heard of these three factors. I have to admit, I didn’t even have to think for a split second. I immediately ran in the opposite direction (Canon)!

I jumped on the Canon Rebel T2i and got my pre-order in right away. I have now been the cinematographer for two narrative short films in the past couple of months. On both projects, I ended up using both my T2i and a 7D. So how do these cameras stack up when it comes to actual work of shooting narrative films?

The Quality

In terms of image quality, the 7D and the T2i are virtually identical. They are basically the same brains inside the camera, and they use the same EF mounted lenses. The 7D does provide more flexibility on the low ISO. Where the T2i offers 100, 200, and 400 ISO as the lowest three ISOs, the 7D does provide all of those in addition to 120, 250, 320, and 360. So, the 7D has a little more precision and flexibility in that way, though I will say I haven’t felt I needed that level of flexibility too often. There’s also some other nice features the 7D has that the T2i does not. But, frankly, they don’t really affect video shooting too much.

The most notable difference is the two camera bodies. The 7D is metal and hardier. It gives you a little more to hold onto. The T2i is plastic. It’s lighter, not as weather resistant, and not quite as large of a camera to wrap your hands around. But, keep in mind that no DSLR is actually designed for hand-held video shooting. So, again, I don’t feel much of a loss here with the T2i.

For a nice comparison of the 7D and T2i go to: http://stembridgemill.com/2010/03/09/7d-t2i-compared/

Where these cameras really shine when it comes to video is that they can capture 1080p (full 1920x1080) HD video at 30 fps and 23.98 fps (aka 24p). The Depth of Field is fantastic, allowing for a much more traditionally cinematic look than any 1/3-inch, 2/3-inch, or even 1/2-inch chip video camera can allow for. So, coupled with good lenses, the quality and clarity of the HD video these cameras can shoot is quite fantastic.

They do have their shortcomings. The FAT file format the cameras use to store data to Compact Flash or SD cards allows only up to 4 GB files, which comes out to about 12 minutes of 1080p video. So, a single uninterrupted take cannot be any longer than 12 minutes. But, when you’re dealing with narrative filmmaking, an industry used to dealing with film reels that often don’t last more than 11 minutes ... the frank answer is ... big deal.

And, as I mentioned before, these cameras are not ergonomically designed for smooth hand-held video shooting. You just can’t hold it steady enough. Micro-jitters come through. I either shoot on sticks, with a counter-balance system that adds weight and smoothness to the camera’s movement, or a shoulder mount rig.

The colors and contrast these cameras are capable of achieving is pretty remarkable. The more important thing is to get all the vital information, though, and then do your color correcting in post. The Canon cameras generate QuickTime files using the H.264 codec. Yes, these fils are compressed. However, when compared to most other compressed HD codecs out there being used in much more expensive cameras, the results stand up quite well. If you happen to be like me and used to shooting highly compressed video in the form of HDV (or as I like to call it, “bastardized HD” due to it’s 1440x1080 resolution and extreme amount of compression), than the H.264 footage these Canon DSLRs are able to generate is quite an upgrade. Granted, it’s not like shooting R3D files with the Red One where you can literally change your ISO in post. But then again, my T2i cost a fraction-of-a-fraction of the cost for a Red One kit--and still has the same size chip as the Red One.

The Art of DSLR Cinematography

As I mentioned above, in the past couple of of months I’ve had the privilege of being hired as the director of photography for two narrative short films that were I shot with both the Canon 7D and T2i. I’d like to discuss what I’ve learned so far when it comes to not just understanding this technology, but actually bending it to your artistic will. After all, as much of a nerd as I might be about cameras and workflows, I got into all of this because of the art, because of the beautiful images and magnificent stories that can be created and told through the medium of motion picture.

The first of these short films was a student film written and directed by Trevor Duke as a senior project for Easter Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. Duke attended the Los Angeles Film Studies Center recently, the same semester abroad program I attended while in college in Indiana. Coming back from that experience, he wanted to create a high quality senior project and had gained a definite appreciation for the need to work with a good crew even for a small project in order to achieve a high production value. Through a mutual friend, he contacted me about being the cinematographer for his project.

I won’t lie, for reasons I won’t get into here, it takes a lot for the average indie film project to really hook me. However, when Trevor Duke contacted me and told me who he was and what he was up to, I liked the sound of it right away. Once we met, I was sold on the project. Duke has talent and vision, and it is very exciting to work with someone like that, who may be new to filmmaking but is actively trying to take the right steps to make professional level films even as a student. His film, “Torn,” is a character driven drama about a son and mother reunited after a long separation.

When he brought me on, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to shoot with a DSLR camera. My T2i was on pre-order and wasn’t supposed to ship until two days after we wrapped shooting. But I knew I was tired of shooting narrative film projects on my HDV camera. The look wouldn’t be cinematic enough for the emotional depth of Duke’s script. Ultimately, we were able to bring Rajah Samaroo, a filmmaker out of Rhode Island I’ve worked with several times. Samaroo came on board as my Assistant Cameraman and brought to the project his Canon 7D. Then, much to our surprise, Canon decided to ship out the T2i about a week early. It arrived in time for it to be at my disposal for "Torn."

Shooting "Torn”

We crafted a moody atmosphere for “Torn.” Duke chose to shoot the film for 2.35:1 aspect ration and we shot everything in 1080p24, mostly with prime lenses at low f-stops for great shallow depth of field. Because of wanting to shoot with the lenses nearly wide open, we shot almost everything around 100 ISO. We started out using the camera grid markers on the LCD screen to frame up our 2.35:1 frame (which is wider than the native 16:9 the camera shoots). However, as soon as the camera starts recording, the grid vanishes. And since we shot nearly everything with a very hand-held "in the moment" feel (either on a hand-held rig or rocking on sticks), it got hard to keep track of where exactly the top of the 2.35:1 frame was going to be once it was cropped in post. So, I made the choice to frame my shots for the top of the 16:9 frame, leaving extra at the bottom to be cropped out in post once the 2.35 matte was applied. This made the shooting much easier.

We shot 75% of the film with the Canon 7D. At times we would break out my T2i and shoot with two cameras. At other times, the lighter T2i became the primary camera for specific scenes. I didn't have my additional batteries yet, so we couldn't shoot with the T2i all day like we did with the 7D. We always checked our settings to make sure we would match ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop, as well as white balance. We shot everything on the “Faithful” mode on the 7D and T2i. There’s no sharpness boost in this mode, creating a very clean image. While we definitely wanted to have a very film-like contrast to the film, especially given its emotional weight and mood, we were careful to shoot with fairly even footage with plenty of information from the blacks to the highlights so that Duke would have the maximum flexibility in post when color correcting.

The cameras performed beautifully. The footage looks fantastic. We used All Canon lenses: 20mm, 35mm, 50mm, 18-55mm, and 28-135mm. We made sure to always use the camera on sticks or with some means to add mass to the camera for hand-held work. We lit “Torn” mostly with soft lighting sources like Chinese lanterns. I generally will drop in a 200 or 300 watt lamp into a 26-inch lantern or bigger. We also used 200 watt pars for back light, and a SourceFour 750 watt par as a strong hard light coming from outside when the door to the apartment was opened. Most of the lighting was slightly warm and allowed me to pick up good skin tones with the camera, aside from one scene I purposefully lit with a fluorescent light to give the scene a green and sickly tone. Most of the colors on set were warm and somewhat muted. The result fits the mood well for the film.

One the important things to keep in mind, especially if you are used to shooting actual film stock, is that HD video seems to work in the opposite way of film when it comes to ideal exposure. When shooting film, many DPs tend to overexpose the film stock just bit, resulting in better looking raw footage to manipulate in post. HD video tends to hit the ceiling much quicker than film, when it comes to highlights. Overexpose the brightest parts of your HD video frame, and you quickly start loosing detail in those highlights. It just becomes an even white (this is called clipping).

In the blacks, though, these DLSRs in particular maintain a good amount of detail. Thus, I’ve begun regularly underexposing my footage by up to 1 stop (though generally between 1/3 to 1/2 stop under “ideal” exposure according to the camera’s light meter). This provides great contrast and saturation with a lot of details from the black to the highlights without any clipping (unless you’re shooting a backlit subject against the sun lit sky). This was the exact exposure philosophy of my next venture as a cinematographer.

Shooting "Pork Chop Night.”

Fellow filmmaker and friend, Raz Cunningham, had written a short script that picked up an award from a Sundance screenwriting workshop. As he embarked on the journey of producing and directing this script, he expressed interest in having me DP the film. I jumped on board right away, having worked with Cunningham before.

“Pork Chop Night,” Cunningham’s short film, is significantly different in style and tone. It’s a comedy about the role reversal of parents and children. We shot it with the Canon 7D and T2i like “Torn.” However, this time, the T2i was A-Camera from the start, with the 7D technically labelled as B-Camera. The truth is, we shot almost 90% of the film with two cameras simultaneously.

We shot the film in 1080p24 for 16:9, in the “Faithful” mode again, using a variety of lenses, mostly primes. We had two Canon 50mm lenses which were the most used lenses. I find I shoot at least thr3ee quarters of all my footage with my Canon 50mm 1.8f prime. I do have the Canon 18-55mm zoom and the Sigma 70-300mm zoom (which I mostly use for still photography or extra macro close-up work). Bryant Naro, my 2nd Camera Operator and AC brought on board his 7D along with his lenses: Canon 50mm 1.4f prime and Tokina 11-16mm 2.0f zoom, (which was just amazing).

Brandon Meadows was our Gaffer, and he utilized my lighting kit quite well. This was our second project together in these exact roles. Again, we tended to use Chinese lanterns quite a bit, with carefully bounced lights for fill or back light. The house we shot in was mostly white walls, aside from the dinning room, which had blue walls. Despite the director’s dislike of the blue walls in real life, he is in love with how they look on camera. The tone of this film is much lighter, so we definitively didn’t want to go with as moody a look as I had gone for with “Torn.”

Naro, the 2nd Camera Op, and I consistently matched camera settings, making sure to shoot always on the same ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop as much as possible. We only varied when the use of particular lenses didn’t allow for an exact match in settings. We also consistently underexposed our shots by about a full stop. As I review the footage (I am also the editor for “Pork Chop Night”), I have come across a few shots that I feel are slightly darker than I want them to ultimately be. We mostly underexposed by 1 stop, and looking back, I think I prefer to stick to the 1/3 to 1/2 stop under in the future.

I also tend to use a Minolta incident light meter. The readings can be slightly different at times from the camera’s built-in light meter. But they are quite close. The light meter is definitely helpful with measuring the contrast ratio between key light and fill, or key light and shadow. You can look all you want at the camera's LCD, but some times just doing the math is best.

Speaking of the LCD screen, I do appreciate the 7D and T2i’s built in display of luma and RGB levels for stills and video. I often would snap a quick still shot of a lighting set-up with characters in place, and then check the luma and RGB levels for that shot.

One particular challenge at times was the lack of a good field monitor. We did use my MacBook Pro with the Canon software. We could attach the T2i to my MacBook Pro via USB (I used an long extension) and get a live feed from the camera on screen, and even control the camera, which was useful for a few shots where the camera had to be in a corner or closet and I couldn’t manipulate it easily. The problem is that once you hit record on the camera, the camera’s processor is so focused on recording and saving the HD file that the playback on the MacBook Pro is extremely jumpy. For a stationary shot, we made due with this as a monitor. However, you cannot use the playback on the MacBook Pro to pull focus!

For one particular scene, I was shooting with a counter balance rig so we could be hand-held and move about, following the movement of the actors. I was using the T2i’s LCD screen and having a bit of a hard time telling if I was hitting my focus dead on or not. I tended to shoot about 1 stop closed up from wide open. Lenses tend to be sharpest around there. I began to wonder if I should close up more, and give myself a wider depth of field. I tried this, but I still didn’t feel right. As Naro and I talked through what to do, Naro suggested I go the opposite direction and shoot wide open with the shallowest depth of field possible. I did just that and found that, in fact, it worked very well. I was either in focus or clearly out of focus. There was no question about it. I found that I had to search much less.

The two camera set-ups were at times quite frustrating for the grips, since lighting for two cameras is not the same as lighting for one. Such set-ups took longer to accomplish for sure. However, looking at it from the perspective of a fellow director, allowing the two actors to shoot their individual close-up shots simultaneously meant they could each give it their best effort and know it was being filmed. Especially using child actors, this was a great advantage to us.

Considering the cost of these DLSRs, someone undertaking an ambitious short film should definitely consider buying two T2i cameras for the price of buying one 7D, and be able to shoot a lot of two camera setups. We made great use of the two cameras on “Pork Chop Night.” At times I would take the wide master shot and let Naro go hand-held with a 50mm, letting him get mediums and close-up shots of the action. We got more coverage that way with fewer takes. As I’ve started the editing process, I can already tell that this film will not look at all like it was shot in two (relatively speaking) short production days.

We also did utilize a dolly and jib for certain shots. I own both, and brought them to set. The jib is pretty light weight, designed ideally for prosumer HD cameras. I’ve used it before with the Panasonic HVX200 and a lens adapter system. That’s about the maximum weight I would ever want to put on that thing. The nice thing about going down to a light camera like a DSLR is that we put no strain at all on the jib and got very smooth movement.

Final Thoughts

These DSLRs are definitely great tools. They do have their limitations. I know that for some editors not used to dealing with the new tapeless workflows, dealing with footage from these cameras can seem a little problematic at times. However, I have found the process of transcoding from the H.264 original footage to Apple ProRes for editing and color grading to be a very painless step in the process, and it ultimately beats the socks off of real-time tape capturing (which then has to be transcoded again anyway to get the footage to be true 24p since shooting to tape can only be in 29.97 fps).

Shooting narrative projects like this, I have yet to run into any takes that need to be longer than 12 minutes. In fact, most takes are in the range of one to two minutes. Only in interviews do I concern myself with that particular limitation. These cameras are small, and do require some accessorizing to be more ideally suited for video shooting. However, the benefit of shooting with a chip the size of a frame of super 35mm film and getting to use prime lenses far outweighs such limitations.

And if that’s not enough to convince you, than maybe you should tune into the final episode of House this season, which was all shot on the Canon 5D Mark II (the big brother to the 7D and T2i, but still a DSLR). In fact, I have read that they shot with Canon lenses, despite the available PL mounts for these DSLRs that allow you to use pro cinema lenses.

Ultimately, a tool is a tool. How you use the tools available to you define greatly your artistic abilities.

The DSLR Revolution

2010-03-30T10:32:00.019-04:00

If you happen to be like me, a total camera nerd (or at least an enthusiast), you’ve probably been following some of what’s been going on with new DSLR still cameras that are capable of shooting HD video. These cameras are now being referred to as HDSLRs. Some of you, however, may not be following this quite so closely, or may have heard of the concept but are wondering ... what’s so revolutionizing about DSLR cameras that can shoot video?

Allow me to briefly explain. I want to start with the most obvious--and yet most totally overlooked--aspect of a good camera. The lens. The glass you shoot your image through is really at least 70% of how good your image is. Forget about all the stuff behind the lens, and those great digital sensors that are amazingly light sensitive and have great resolution. All of that is naught if you’re lens is junk. Want proof of concept that lens really is so important? Go look up the price for the Red One camera. Then look up the price for a PL-mount professional grade cinema lens by, say, Carl Zeiss. A great prime in that category will easily cost as much as the $20,000 to $30,000 Red One set up (depending on how you customize it). Try buying a set of such prime lenses, and now you’re talking about the price of a house.

Now, we’re not dealing with those kinds of lenses. I just wanted to prove a point here. But the first revolutionary idea these new HDSLRs present to us is the option of shooting with some great still photography lenses. Depending on your budget, you can easily spend between $100 and $5,000 on a single lens for a DSLR. What’s more, renting still photography lenses is really quite affordable. I’ve done it for two projects (back when we were shooting with lens adaptors that allowed use of still photography lenses on a regular HD camcorder).

In fact, quite some time ago I wondered why no one was making a video camera like the HVX200 that could shoot HD video but simply had a mount for still photo lenses. What I didn’t realize at the time was the issue of sensor size. DSLR lenses just aren’t designed to work with a 1/3-inch chip that most prosumer cameras have. It’s just far too small!

And then lens adaptors came along. And I have worked closely with those, though I never bought one. And here’s what I have to say about lens adaptors. At the time, they were a gift from God. You could use still photo lenses and get great depth of field, achieving a wonderfully cinematic look for your project. However, they also were a total pain in the ass. They suck up light. The last project I DPed with a lens adaptor, I tested and rated the set up to be the equivalent of 50 ISO film speed. For those of you who understand ISO (or ASA) numbers ... you know that that’s about as slow as film stock comes. The lower the number, the more light you need. Most people shoot still photos around 400 or 800 ISO. My new DSLR doesn’t even drop bellow 100 ISO. So, when shooting with the adaptors, it always felt like we had to set our sets and actors on fire to get an image at minimum exposure. We also had to shoot with the DSLR prime lenses wide open, which didn’t allow for them to be at their peak performance (which is usually about one or two stops up).

The other problem with lens adaptors is that they were noisy--and I mean the image. The system works by allowing the DSLR lens to focus on a ground glass that has grain. That ground glass vibrates or spins. The video camera is focused on the ground glass. Thus, the ground glass stood in for the larger chip size needed to use DSLR lenses. But you definitely had grain. Now, it managed to look pretty organic, like film grain. But even shooting with a 1080p camera, I think you’d be lucky to have an image shot with a lens adaptor that looked no better than 16mm film once it was projected on a movie theatre screen.

But here we are, and DSLRs are shooting HD video. In fact, it’s been going on for more than a year now. Slumdog Millionaire effectively used the Canon 5D Mark II to shoot sequences of the film. Since then, other models have come, and there’s been a lot of good competition, though frankly Canon has lead the way, with Nikon lagging behind only managing to put out 720p capable cameras (aside form one that shoots 1080p but only 20 frames per second--what the heck is that?). In fact, Red was forced to re-evaluate their Scarlet camera and they went back to the drawing board to make a Scarlet that will compete not just with the prosumer video camera market, but the DSLR market as well. So far, however, I have this sinking feeling Red’s letting things get away from them by continuing to push back the release of the Scarlet. Meanwhile, more HDSLRs hit the market at lower and lower prices, making the prospect of buying a Scarlet for guys like me more of a ... “meh, we’ll wait and see what it does compared to what I have” kind of thing. Of course, it will be worth keeping in mind that having worked with the Red One I believe the Scarlet still stands a chance to really blow us away.

Now, I don’t want to get too drawn in to discussing the specifics of these HDSLR cameras. If you are interested, here’s a great rundown of features and what to look for in a camera: http://nofilmschool.com/dslr

But I do want to touch on the other features that make these cameras so fantastic. The CMOS chip inside the Canon 7D and the T2i (the latter of which I own), is in fact just a smidge bigger than the sensor inside the Red One. And if you spring for the Canon 5D Mark II, the chip is a full 35mm frame size, a good bit bigger than the Red One’s M sensor.

Now, I’ll speak from my experiences here. I own the Rebel T2i (aka EOS 550D). It just hit the market. In fact, Canon moved up the shipping date by a week, so I got it sooner than expected. In fact, just in time for it to be 2nd camera on a short film I DPed with the 7D. The guts of the 7D and the T2i are pretty much the same, and having spent last weekend shooting with both cameras side by side, I cannot honestly see a difference in picture quality. We shot in 1080p24, and I’m impressed with how clean the image looks and how effective these cameras are in lower light. Now, compare the 18 megapixel CMOS sensor of the T2i to my Sony FX1 prosumer camcorder with something like 2 megapixels, and you start to see that my new T2i, which cost a fraction of what my FX1 did when I first got it, is miles ahead in capturing a beautiful image.

And that's the final revolutionizing aspect of the DSLR cameras is their price. Compared to the prosumer HD cameras out there, most of these HDSLRs are cheap. So, for the filmmaker on a very tight budget, buying the T2i for $800 and getting a couple lenses for another two or $300 sounds a lot better than spending six, seven, or more grand on a video camera with a fixed zoom lens and a small sensor that makes getting shallow depth of field next to impossible.

Having said all of this, there are drawbacks to the DSLRS. They are tools like any other, and one needs to know their limitations. For the shooters wanting to cover long live events, ENG style shooting on the go, and hand-held documentary work, HDSLRs present more challenges than advantages. For that kind of work having a shallow DoF is actually kind of a pain, and potentially a hindrance. With my T2i, I cannot zoom while shooting video without having noticeable changes (as in jumps) in exposure due to the lens’s iris adjusts as I zoom (a personal note here: when it comes to narrative filmmaking ... I hate, hate, hate zooms anyway!). Takes are limited to a max of 12 minutes because the maximum file size the camera can create is 4 GB (or 12 minutes of 1080p HD). The cameras are also small and pickup micro-jitters when working hand-held. So you need some shoulder mount system or counter balance to smooth things out. And the video is quite compressed using the H.264 codec, which as of yet isn’t really supported natively by most editing systems. I transcode to Apple ProRes (regular or HQ depending on the project) before editing.

Now, all those drawbacks in mind ... if you are an indie filmmaker trying to make your next short film or low budget feature, I think you really need to take a look at the options and advantages an HDSLR can bring to your next project. The cinematic look one can achieve is spectacular.

But allow me a final caution. Again, these cameras are just tools like any other. They won’t do the work for you, or magically make you a great cinematographer or filmmaker. Yes, they will shoot a very nice image. But you still must know the cinematic language of shot composition and selection, good lighting, editing, and aesthetic style and storytelling craft.

I think there’s a temptation among many new filmmakers to look at tools like this and think, “That’s it, I can now make my movie and it will look amazing! People will love it! I’ll get into Sundance! I’m on my way!!!” This happens every time a new breakthrough in cameras happens. When HD first came into the prosumer market, it happened. I witnessed it personally and was even party to it. The truth is, these are just tools. Tools can be used well and they can be used poorly. These are also not perfect tools. They have definite limitations.

So I caution new filmmakers to keep these things in mind: A camera that can shoot beautiful footage is no excuse for not properly lighting a scene. A camera that can shoot beautiful footage doesn’t make up for not knowing how to shoot for your edit. And ultimately, nothing replaces or makes up for bad storytelling. Wanna see a great film shot on a less than fantastic camera ... watch Once! Always make your tools servants to the story you are telling, not the other way around.

On Offending People.

2010-03-07T17:15:00.017-05:00

In contemplating what it means to be a filmmaker and a consistent adherent to a Christian worldview, inevitably I have been forced to deal with the delicate issue of offending people. There’s really no easy way to actually categorize the people you might end up offending, which makes this issue all the more complicated.

There’s a couple broad and quite crude generalizations I can make, however. There are those people I might offend because of openly acknowledging my discipleship to Christ. There are also fellow followers of Christ who I might offended by not living up to their expectations of what it means to be an artist and a disciple. This, in a general sense at least, is what it can mean for a guy like me when I use the expression “between a rock and a hard place.”

Let me quickly make a very important point. I’m not actually interested in offending anyone. It’s not high on my list of priorities. I try to take to heart the New Testament passage that expresses the notion that, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”*

But here’s the key, “If it is possible ...” The truth is, it’s pretty hard to figure out what can and might offend everyone out there in the world. Particularly when you’re making something like a film (or even a blog entry) that might be seen by many people, most of whom you may have never met and may have very different perspectives from yours on all kinds of things.

So, how’s a guy like me to make sure I don’t offend people?

I’ve already indicated that offending people is no an objective of mine. Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret ... NOT offending people is also NOT an objective of mine. I do want to do all I can to live at peace with everyone. But even this passage of Romans leaves open the notion that you’re not always going to succeed at living at peace with everyone.

First of all, let’s face it, we all know people who just are looking to be offended by something. It kind of makes their day. So, when I do come across this kind of personality, I have to borrow a notion Jesus taught to his disciples about visiting a town that wasn’t particularly welcoming to them. He instructed them to shake the dust from their sandals. In other words, just move on. It’s not your problem, it’s not your fault, just move on. So, if you happen to be someone looking for something in this blog entry to be offended by ... huh, yeah, you really should get a life. There’s many better things to do with your time.

Now, there are people that may be offended by my open expressions of my Christian worldview in my films. That’s understandable. We live in a particularly secular and humanist society where someone expressing their religious worldview in art can be perceived as pushing that particular religion or worldview.

Okay, I’m going to let you in on another secret. Call it pushing, promoting, advocating, endorsing ... preaching ... call it what you will, but yes, I am in my own way expressing my worldview as food for thought for audiences because I do think it has great value (and not because of anything I bring to it but because of what it brings to me). Think of it this way, if someone out there discovers something great that helps life in very practical ways, wouldn’t you want them to share this idea? This is why, I for one am not in any way offended by works of art, conversations, blogs, or anything really that someone from a different worldview may wish to use to express and promote their ideas. That’s great by me. Dialogue is what I’m about! And at the end of the day, I’m a seeker of Truth. There is always more I can learn! I don’t have life all figured out! So, let’s talk!

So when it comes to someone being offended because I may present ideas derived from my Christian worldview, I can only say, I’m sorry if it offended you. However, I’m not loosing any sleep over it. We live in a diverse and exciting world and people of all worldviews should have the opportunity to express themselves, regardless of whether or not I agree with them on every point or their conclusions about this world, this life, God, or humanity. I should be able to respectfully hear them and engage in loving dialogue about our differences and even celebrate our similarities. That’s why I’m not all that worried about offending people because of my faith. If it happens, it happens. It’s not the end of my world. I hope it’s not the end of yours.

But what about the other side of that crude generalization I made above? What about the people that I supposedly share my worldview with (and I say supposedly here because far too many Christians I have met and interacted with throughout my 29 years so far on this planet actually don’t really adhere to a Christian worldview as might be derived from careful reading and study of Christ’s teachings).

One reason this generalization into two camp (Christians and non-Christians) I might offend is so crude and problematic is that there are far too many complexities and variants of the “kinds” of Christians out there and how I might offend them. I’ve had this recently brought to my attention by a particular small Christian publication that will soon be running an interview with me. While I appreciate this, I have to admit frustration upon learning that this article will not include a link to my website in light of the fact that my films use offensive language. The excuse used was that they would like to promote my philosophy of filmmaking without necessarily promoting my films.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to point out that this is completely contradictory logic on their part. However ... whatever ...

I get why they have made this choice. It’s a real concern, especially when you officially stamp the label of “Christian” upon something like a publication or institution, that you not offend your ... “constituents” (for lack of a better word). And given that a large cross-section of American conservative Christians do find certain words in the english language to be offensive, I can see why this publication made this choice. However, I can’t help but shake my head at the underlying contradictory logic in running the article about me at all if they’re worried about their readers being offended by my films’s content. But they’re running the article without the link to my site. Ironically, this is only for formality's sake. Let’s face it, I’m pretty sure almost any one of their readers could just Google my name upon seeing the article and still be offended by what they discover.

But beyond that, I philosophically come from a totally different perspective on language and semantics than what has been upheld by conservative (usually evangelical) Christians in America for several decades. Without getting bogged down by a lengthy philosophical examination of semantics, let me just express here that I do not in any way think any one word is evil in-and-of itself, nor do I find any support for this idea in Scripture. However, what I do see in Scripture is a consistent warning that we not use words (any words) to hurt other people. I’ll put it this way, the real issue to me is not specific semantics (I can’t say the word shit because it somehow is evil), the real issue is the Golden Rule (I don’t call someone a piece of shit because that is a hurtful thing to call someone). So, all I’m saying is that when it comes to the whole issue of Christians getting offended because of language I use (myself or in my films), I attempt to respect such people’s perspective, but I’m not about to tip-toe around them either.

And then there are issues of sexual content, violence, corrupt characters, and so forth, that have long divided Christians when it comes to the kind of entertainment and art they expose themselves to. I’m not an absolute authority on these things. I am merely an artist struggling to make sense of the human condition and the world we live in. In struggling with the very harsh reality of the world we live in, I just see little point in sugar coating things. I would point out that careful reading of the Scriptures exposes one to such horrible things as murder, gang rape, genocide, adultery, war, torture, and many more horrific things.

Now, this is not to say I’m interested in any sort of pornographic presentation and reveling in things like violence, sexual content, foul language, and unethical or immoral behavior for the sake of glorifying those things. Absolutely not! My Christian worldview gladly guides me to seek redemption from these terrible things, to find what is good in a world filled with so much that is bad.

So, let me say this: I do seek in all possible ways to live at peace with everyone. But that’s not always possible. Heck, that’s not even the most important part of being a Christian, now is it? So, as an artist, I seek to make the best possible work I know how to make in a manner that is true and authentic to myself, my worldview, and the world around me.

Finally, I am not in any way interested in offending any of my audience by making films that are untrue to the world we live in. Do I want to present hope, joy, peace, love, and redemption? Absolutely! But I want to present these ideas in the context of the broken, fallen, hurting, and frankly all around fucked up world we live in. If some find that offensive ... I am very sorry. But I’m not losing any sleep over it.

* Romans 12:18, NIV.

Broader Horizons for Short Film Distribution

2010-01-13T14:15:00.016-05:00

I’ve met a lot of new and aspiring filmmakers in the past several years, and one thing I’ve noticed is a particular drive in many of them to jump with both feet into feature filmmaking. There are a few (very few, in fact) that due to past experiences and a passion for learning through reading and observation are able to jump into directing or producing their first feature film without the trail and error of making some short films first (though, most eventually recognize having had more experience wouldn’t have hurt either).

Now there are many reason such filmmakers list for not wanting to “waste their time” with short films. But in this entry, I want to address one particular myth that exists in some indie film circles. There’s this idea floating out there that “there is no market for short films.”

No Market for Shorts? More Like, No Market for Crappy First Features.

First of all, I want to point to any first-time filmmakers reading this blog that there’s much more of a market for well made short films than there are for first feature films that fall far short of the mark of excellence. Allow me to quote a book I’m currently reading, The Reel Truth by Reed Martin:

“Indeed, getting accepted to Sundance remains an incredible long shot, something filmmakers often choose not to acknowledge. For 2009, there were more than 3,600 feature films submitted to the festival--up from 2,600 in 2005--with only the same 120 accepted in dramatic competition, a 3.3 percent acceptance rate that is far tougher than the acceptance rates at Harvard (7.1 percent), Princeton (7.8 percent), Yale (8.3 percent), Columbia (8.7 percent), or Stanford (9.5 percent).” *

Now, consider the potential mistakes a first time director makes on that first project or two (and believe me, I know them well; I’ve made all those mistakes and then some more). In other words, unless your feature film really stands out (and there’s really only a couple of ways of standing out these days: an amazing and well told story, or big names in your cast), the chances that it will be premiering at Sundance are, well ... virtually non-existent. However, there are still many filmmakers out there every year scrapping together a few thousand dollars and shooting their digital indie feature hoping it will be the next Primer, or Pi, or El Mariachi. What these blindly hopeful filmmakers (and I was once one of them) fail to realize is that the indie film world, and Sundance specifically, has changed dramatically since Primer made it’s splash there. Not only that, but such movies are the exception. They are long shots to say the least. Feature filmmaking is already such a high risk investment of time and money and energy, that adding to that the need for your film to be an exception to a rule is asking for disaster.

So, if you’re worried that your going to waste your time making a short film or two because there’s no market for short film, let me point out that there is in fact no market for poorly made first features. Sure, you’ll learn a lot making that first feature, but the amount of time, money, and energy invested in that one project that’s all too likely to never see more than rejection slips from major festivals and a humble premiere at small festival or local screening may not end up being worth it. Sure, you may think it’s worth it, but your producer, investors, cast members, crew members--all people who sacrificed immensely to help make your dream come true, may come to think that in hind sight it wasn’t worth it. Good luck working with them again.

Add to that the fact that distribution companies are inundated every year with first feature films seeking a distribution deal. Many good indie features are not finding distribution. So, you owe it to yourself and all the people that may work with you on your first feature film to stop and ask yourself, “what separates my first feature film from all these other films that fail to find distribution every year?” And be really honest with yourself. Who knows, the answer may still be a good one and you may still find that it’s worth proceeding. But it’s always best to really stop and educate yourself about the industry and honestly asses your chances of breaking in. Let’s face it, the deck is stacked against us starting out. Making big rash decisions can be fatal to your career while it’s still in gestation.

New Markets for Short Films.

When someone tells me that they don’t want to make a short film to gain more experience because once they’re done with it they wouldn’t have anything to do with it because there is no market for short films, I want to scream, “Bullshit! Thank you for clearly demonstrating how little you know about indie filmmaking!”

First of all, and I’ve written about this before, even if you make a short film and it just becomes a learning experience that you never show anyone else because you’re too embarrassed by it, at least you took a project from concept to completion now. That’s invaluable experience. And, think of it, if you have a short film you’re embarrassed to show anyone (and I have a few of those), that could have been your first feature right there that you struggled to make only to end up being ashamed of its existence.

But, that’s not what this blog entry is about. No, this is about markets for short films. With the Internet and television merging into a new single entity, short content readily available on the web is growing in demand. With the quality of equipment available to the aspiring filmmakers, the standard for content generated by new filmmakers is also improving. This means more people are willing to take a chance on watching an indie film if they think it will entertaining and polished.

Now, I’d like to speak from experience here. Just this week, my short film, “Cold October,” was released on DVD and Video on Demand on www.indieflix.com. Now, Indieflix, as a rule, seeks films that have been accepted to at least one film festival. However, they clearly state on their submission form that they will still consider films that may not yet have made it into a festival. So, it didn’t hurt that “Cold October” has played at several festivals and was honored with the Best Screenplay award at the 2009 Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia. But honestly, it seems to me that if you made a good enough short, Indieflix would still accept it for distribution. But really, chances are that if you made a short film good enough for Indieflix to distribute, than it’s bound to get into some festivals out there. Just keep scrapping the cash together and submitting.

To see what the “Cold October” distribution page on Indieflix looks like, check out: http://www.indieflix.com/film/cold-october-30410/

One thing that attracted me to Indieflix is their non-exclusive contract for distribution as well as their net-profit percentage they keep verses what goes back to the filmmakers. They do a 30-70 split of the net profit generated by a film. They keep a 30 percent fee, and 70 percent goes back to the filmmaker. They track the sale of DVDs and VOD (video on demand) streaming payments, deduct expenses involved with DVD creation and shipping, and calculate net profit. Under this model, the filmmaker actually stands a chance of recovering some, if not all, of the money invested in making his or her short film. On top of that, it’s a non-exclusive deal, so the filmmaker is free to seek out other avenues of distribution in tandem with Indieflix.

Another opportunity that drew me to Indieflix is the possibility of gaining exposure for “Cold October” on Hulu. We are seeking to go forward with distribution on Hulu, but as of this time we are still working on the details of that branch of distribution through Indieiflix. Maybe, once that has gone through I may have more to report about that here. However, the point remains that VOD on sites like Indieflix and Hulu is a growing means for filmmakers to find an audience for their short films. There are also a whole lot of other new websites out there focused on distribution for short films and webisodes, many with means to generate income from the content you are creating.

More opportunities are bound to open up in the near future as places like iTunes and other online video providers continue to look for new content to present to their customers. There are already distribution companies focused on gaining exposure for indie films, shorts and features, on places like iTunes, Netflix, AmazonVOD, as well as print-on-demand style DVD sales.

But be careful to do your research before signing on with just anyone to distribute your short film. There are some places out there that charge fees for setting up the distribution. Places like Indieflix, that require no money upfront but only make a profit when your film actually make sales, seem like a much better idea to me. So, be sure to read up on what you're agreeing to before you jump in.

A while back, Raz Cunningham (who has his own film blog worth checking out) passed along to me a list of possible distribution companies for short films. Here's that list:

Indieflix
Shorts International
NewVideo
Fans of Film
Ingroves Pure Digital Media

So there you have it. There is a real market and demand for short films. Think about it, you can make a short film which affords you some great opportunities: First, you gain valuable experience in the craft and business of taking a project from concept to script to set to editing suit to distribution. This experience will be invaluable! Second, you actually stand a chance of recovering the money invested in making such a short film, which shouldn’t be more than $30,000, and honestly should be made for a fraction of that cost if you know what you’re doing and can work with people on deferred payment (which if you show them these distribution possibilities they may be more open to). And third, when you’re ready to make a feature film, you are able to show potential investors that you know something about taking a film from start to finish and that you can market your idea in order to reach your audience.

Now, start brainstorming. What do you want to tell the world in 10 to 30 minutes? And if you feel like supporting this particular indie filmmaker, pick up a copy of "Cold October" on DVD or stream it on the web. My cast, crew, and I certainly appreciate the support!

End Notes:

* The Reel Truth: Everything You Didn't Know You Need to Know About Making an Independent Film by Reed Martain. Faber and Faber, Inc. New York, NY. Published 2009. Page 33.

For more Info on the short films Mikel J. Wisler has made, see: RunawayPen.webs.com

An Interview with Kyle Prohaska, Director of Standing Firm.

2009-10-09T13:42:00.020-04:00

Some time ago, Kyle Prohaska, an independent filmmaker, who has been following this little blog of mine, contacted me. Kyle has his own website and blog and we got to talking. We’ve kept in contact and Kyle has shared with me some things about the feature film he’s directing, Standing Firm. I’ve seen some scenes from the film and the trailer, and the level of professional achievement is really remarkable. For all of you new filmmakers out there struggling to find your path and for all of my fellow Christians hoping to see some interesting new voices in the filmmaking world, you are in for a treat here. I did a little interview with Kyle.

Please be sure to go check out www.standingfirmmovie.com and watch the trailer for the film.

And now, the interview ...

--- --- ---

MJW: Tell me what Standing Firm is about.

Kyle Prohaska: Standing Firm is a story about suffering primarily. Not the most comfortable subject to cover, but an important one. It follows a man named Dave who's recently lost his wife in a car accident. Angry at God for his wife's death, he turns away from all things church related, making life very difficult for Steven, his college-aged son who continues to try to reach is father for Christ, but comes out empty handed each time. While Steven tries to cope with his fathers attitude and figure out what God wants him to do, Dave tries to find the answer to the greatest question about his wife's death...WHY. The film covers a lot of different angles on family, and tries to be very honest about the outcome of life, with Christ and without.

Still from the film. Used with permission.

MJW: What drew you into filmmaking?

KP: I think it was the films I grew up on more than anything. I would watch them and go “wow that made me feel good” or “that depressed me, but taught me something great ... I wonder how I could do the same for someone else?” I just noticed myself recognizing and seeing deeper into films than most folks around me, and the art grew on me as time went on. I just wanted to give to someone else the same awesome feeling that my favorite films gave me, and teach them something while I'm at it. The power of film is monumental, and the ability to evoke emotion and thought really excites me.

MJW: How did you go about preparing to make Standing Firm?

KP: I think the beginning of Standing Firm was well before I put pen to paper. The story is built from my own experiences as a child in an un-equally yoked marriage. I had two parents going in two directions, being taught similar lessons by each parent, but from a different angle. That made for an interesting childhood, and spiritual childhood at that. The entire story of the film (besides the death of the mom) is built from a lot of real life experiences that I think will relate to many folks. In regards to the preparation of the actual film, it was an insane task.

Still from the film. Used with permission.

MJW: How long was production?

KP: LONG. Very, very LONG. The length of shooting on this film was excruciating, and I take full credit for that, hah. I did it with a purpose though, and one that I think benefits the film immensely. I won't schedule a film like this ever again, because you really shouldn't do it this way, but it was worth it. Let me explain what we did ...

We have minimal crew, minimal access to locations, inexperienced actors, inexperienced crew (including me), tough weather (western New York is incredibly hard to predict and changes constantly), and a ton of other factors. I scheduled the film in the most unconventional way not to annoy everyone, but to give the film the highest quality possible. Instead of shooting out each location (or even rooms in that location), I scheduled the scenes in an order that regarded the difficulty of completion. I didn't give my actors any difficult scenes for weeks, to allow them to get comfortable and gain some experience as well as myself. I had less than four people on set most of the time. About 75% of shooting was done with myself, my Gaffer Shaun Smith (that doubled as our sound man), and my actors who were always helping unload and move equipment. We were jumping from location to location, room to room, inside then outside, etc. It was murder on everyone, but in the end I can see the difference in the cut of the film. The difficult scenes were shot last, and hold the greatest acting quality. Some of the scenes we shot first we ended up reshooting to bump them up in quality as well. It wasn't that I didn't know how to schedule it right, but I knew that if I had, it would be a disaster (the end result).

On the set of Standing Firm, Kyle Prohaska is second from the right.
Picture take by Shaun Smith. Used with permission.

Everyone had jobs, families, and all sorts of other things to do outside of the film. It was very much a group effort. In the beginning we shot many more days a week but after the first three months, it dwindled quickly. Bit by bit we gathered what we needed and production ended at the end of May 2009. We started in the beginning of June 2008. It was a long haul, but everyone grew immensely and the quality of the film was brought up a huge amount given the way we did things. Not all of it was planned either. Even given the way I wanted to schedule it, it still took three times longer than I thought. Nobody could give me a really good gauge on how long it would've taken, because nobody makes movies this way. Next time around, it'll be five weeks with everyone doing the movie fulltime, with way more crew, and way more control over locations.

Still from the film. Used with permission.

MJW: What did you shoot with and who was your cinematographer?

KP: We shot Standing Firm on the Canon XH-A1 with the Letus Extreme and Nikon Primes. People underestimate what you can pull off with such an inexpensive setup. I wanted to achieve something unique with the tools we had. Something cinematic and “legit” looking, not amateur. Although the film does come across as something lower in budget, the actual working budget is very well hidden I think, and mostly due to the presentation of the film cinematically. I was the cinematographer on the project, which is something of a dream for me, and I'm very happy with the results. I worked very closely with a good friend of mine named Shaun Smith, a professional photographer from Buffalo, NY to light the film. Shaun was the Gaffer and has very much to do with how the film actually “looks” in regards to color and light. I needed his help to get this film completed visually and with a quality I would be happy with.

This was the very first time I've shot a film, but I think I have a very good sense of how things should look and what looks good. I tried to squeeze out quality from every shot no matter how trivial it was to mask our budget and invoke a “pro” feel to the film. It's amazing how quickly people judge content now. In just a few seconds they decide if your film looks “real,” and by real I mean like something they'd go get at Blockbuster. I think with what we had (which wasn't much, and the lights we had were few), we pulled off something I've yet to see anyone else do at this budget, with this setup specifically. I'm very happy with how the film looks given the time, money, crew, locations, etc. we had. I can't wait to get behind the camera again!

Kyle Prohaska on the set of Standing Firm.
Picture take by Shaun Smith. Used with permission.

MJW: What did you use for editing?

KP: I'm editing on Final Cut Pro using Final Cut Studio 2 on a MacPro. The editing process started on our first shooting day and continues to be refined day by day. I wanted to have a working edit as shooting progressed to see how the film was coming together, how the camera work was turning out, whether I had any problems within my story, and a ton of other things. Since this was a first go for everyone, I wanted to have a handle on where we were and what we were achieving. Editing this film has been an interesting challenge since some scenes are combining shots from all four seasons. Because of how insane our schedule was and what we were getting done, I was looking at incomplete scenes for months at a time waiting to drop in that last piece to see how it worked together. It's been very nerve-wracking to say the least, but everything seems to be coming together very well. With a lot of scenes it's a miracle that everything came together the way it did, God had his hand on this thing and covered our mistakes.

MJW: What are your goals for Standing Firm?

KP: I set out to make the best film possible, like anyone else. Everyone has their personal goals as well, but in the end I really just hope God does some great things with the message he gave us to tell. Exposure is always nice, having a good project in the can is always nice, but seeing the rippling impact it could give would be far more enjoyable and satisfying than any personal goals I might have set for myself and achieved. I'm looking for things of eternal value, the lives impacted in the end is what it's about, so that's what I'm looking forward to. It's always easy to get wrapped up in the dollars and the revenue. Everyone has to eat, make a living, and for many in this industry provide for a family. I think that's a definite struggle, trusting God to guide in the business end of things when it comes to our “goals.” If you want to know my personal financial goals for the film, I hope to make enough on it (over time) so I can pay my bills while I make another. That's the goal everyone wants to shoot for, I think.

Kyle Prohaska on the set of Standing Firm.
Picture take by Shaun Smith. Used with permission.

MJW: How can people see your film? How can they help it gain more exposure?

KP: The film is not completed yet so it's not available to be seen. However, there are a ton of things people can do to help us get exposure. We setup a page on our site with specific instructions on how to do this. Some people just want a magic button they can hit to tell everyone they know, but that's not reality. If you have to take fifteen minutes out of your day to invite all your Facebook friends to our fan page or send out some mass emails...do it! I'm finding that Facebook is one of our greatest ways to tell new people. Some of you have huge friends lists, and in just a few minutes you could tell them all about the film and invite them to the fan page. Don't hound them, just send it out once. If just a few people did that, we would double or triple our fans in a matter of a week. I'm not sure why people don't just take advantage of what they have available. It's a piece of cake. :) View our share page below for other options.

http://www.standingfirmmovie.com/share.php

MJW: What's next for you?

KP: Honestly, I'm not sure. I would like to continue making films, but even from this interview until a release time I still have to figure out a way to live. I'm trying to stay afloat with website jobs mostly. Standing Firm will really be an indicator of where my career will go I think because I can't put this kind of time and money into something again if it can't deliver in some way financially. Again, that's not the main reason for making films for me, but if I want it to be a career I do need it to eventually begin taking care of me. We'll see how Standing Firm does, and what doors God opens from there. Because I have no steady job, I'm always looking for more work and would love to end up on-set with others. I'm just searching for what God wants me to do. One thing I will say is although I want to make more films, if he doesn't give me a story that he clearly wants me to put my time/money into, I won't be making a thing. It's just impossible to imagine giving two years or more of your life to something that has no eternal value. I have a hard time with that. We only have so much time here, make it count.

--- --- ---

For more on Standing Firm:

Christian Cinema ... An Adventure in Missing the Point.

2009-06-16T12:52:00.015-04:00

“Are our churches and broadcasts and books and organizations merely creating religious consumers of religious products and programs? ... ”

- Tony Campolo & Brian D. McLaren, Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel

As a film lover and filmmaker, I am ever the student of the craft. As such, I try to invest time in continued education. So, I’ve been reading a particular book: Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics by Michael Rabiger. Let me tell you, it’s a fantastic book loaded with great information about the process of filmmaking and how to go about equipping yourself to best accomplish the work of making a movie. It’s not light reading, but very worthwhile!

Just recently, as I was reading from this book’s section on preproduction and rehearsing with actors, Rabiger divulged some ideas I thought were quite fascinating. He’s addressing the idea of discussing your film’s theme with your cast members early on in preproduction. But what he says has huge implications for the whole process of filmmaking, and specifically very important implications for the Christian filmmakers that have come from the tradition of making films as a means of evangelism.

Rabiger writes, “Telling a story is really a way of constructing a working model of one’s beliefs. If others are moved to conviction, the principles behind the model have been shared, acclaimed, and may be accepted as having merit. That is the best anyone can do.”*

Rabiger is not writing about Christian films here, for sure. But what he says in the above quoted text seems to indicate the potential validity of trying to make films that persuade someone to change their minds or hearts. However, Rabiger goes on to write this:

A thematic purpose for your work need not try to encompass universal truth (“in our Western way of life the rich get richer while the poor get poorer”) or be morally up lifting (“if people would just vent their real feelings, everyone could be free”). Audiences will feel they are being preached at especially when the scope of the film falls short of the global nature of its message.*

Rabiger goes on from there to express that, “Modest, solid, specific, and deeply felt aims are likely to have more impact.”* The point Rabiger seems to be making here, and I think it really applies quite well to Christian films, is that when we try to communicate something as esoteric, abstract, and huge as grace or redemption, a humble film can hardly get a grip on these things, let along wrap its arms around these ideas in an adequate way. And in the face of this recognition, the temptation of the Christian filmmaker is to then spell out what the audience is supposed to be getting from the film, the message or the point of the film. Doing so is just plain bad filmmaking.

What Rabiger suggest to all filmmakers here is that, “By taking a small truth and deeply investigating it, you can invest it with life and indicate larger truths of wider resonance. Put another way, a thoroughly absorbing and convincing microcosm will effectively create a macrocosm.”*

So, think of it this way: Say I want to make a film that tells a story about grace. Rather then get too caught up in all that grace means to me as a follower of Jesus, the better thing to do is to set about telling a very specific story of grace in action. So maybe I tell the story of a criminal who is shown grace by one of his victims. You can really come up with many ideas. The point is, now I have something specific to do. Take a look at the film Brokedown Palace, and you will see a powerful story of grace in action. And in this focused story, the universal implications can come about (if only we could all treat each other with this level of grace and forgiveness, what would the world be like?)

The important point that I think a lot of Christian films I’ve seen miss is that it is better to focus on a very specific story, and let the actions and characters progress naturally through the story. The story itself, if executed well, will generate a deep resounding connection to those things we already naturally long for as human beings. I’m not convinced that cinema is the proper place to proclaim the gospel, but rather a place to explore truth and it's impact on our lives. Obviously as Rabiger has indicated by his statement that a “story is really a way of constructing a working model of one’s beliefs,” the Christian filmmaker is already presenting his or her worldview through the construction of their story to start with. To try to go beyond this, attempting to merge the mediums of cinema and sermons, is to try to make a Frankenstein monster that is both clunky and unnatural in almost every example I’ve seen. Ultimately, to the non-church going audience that might happen upon such a movie (and the likelihood is extremely low, even for such supposedly successful film as Fireproof) this thing that is presented to them is so foreign and otherworldly, it stands no chance of connecting and making any impact. And as such, if the goal of such a film is to proselytize, it is in fact a wasted effort.

Rabiger says something interesting in a previous section just before the section of his book I have been quoting here. He has a section called “Directing by Asking Questions.” He’s specifically addressing how a director can best go about guiding his cast in discovering their characters and fleshing them out. However, what he says I think really is ultimately one of the best ways of directing as a whole, of making a film at all. He encourages the director to give guidance by engaging the cast in dialogue, by asking them questions. I think this is true too of the audience. One can have an amazing impact on an audience by guiding through asking questions, by showing the audience focused microcosms and then asking if this is true of life once they walk out of the movie theater.

Basically, to a great degree, I see this as a cinematic application of the Socratic Method. The reason I think this approach is so valuable is because of what Rabiger expresses in this particular section. He says that, “people seldom forget what they discover for themselves.”**

This is where I have seen so many Christian films fail. They do not provide the audience with an opportunity to discover anything for themselves. There is little or no room for this. The film is too busy blindly telling the audience what to think. Maybe if Christian filmmakers became less consumed with trying to make a point, and more consumed with making excellent films as an act of worship, more films made by Christians would have more of an impact on secular audiences by providing a common meeting ground of appreciation for the cinematic medium. Until then, however, I fear we may continue to make films that miss the point all together of what cinema is.

“Are our churches and broadcasts and books and organizations merely creating religious consumers of religious products and programs? Are we creating a self-isolating, self-serving, self-perpetuating, self-centered subculture instead of a world-penetrating (like salt and light), world-serving (focused on the ‘least and the lost,’ those Jesus came to seek and save), world transforming (like yeast in bread), God-centered (sharing God’s love for the whole world) counterculture? If so, even if we proudly carry the name evangelical (which means ‘having to do with the gospel’) we’re not behaving as friends to the gospel, but rather as its betrayers.”

- Tony Campolo & Brian D. McLaren, Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel (pg 12)

End notes:
* Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics by Michael Rabiger, (second edition) pg 287.
** Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics by Michael Rabiger, (second edition) pg 286.

Preproduction: A Neglected Art.

2009-05-20T18:50:00.022-04:00

One often-underappreciated aspect of filmmaking is what is commonly referred to as preproduction. It really amounts to that planning phase of filmmaking, once the script is finished or selected and before principle photography begins. For those who might have been working in the film industry, this should be nothing new. However, I have noticed a disturbing trend among indie filmmakers. Preproduction often gets very little focus.

Talk about starting off on the wrong foot. Filmmaking is all about overcoming limitations. There are only so many hours in the day; your budget is only so big; your experience only so deep. Planning is possibly the most important part of making a film. The more prepared you are, the more creative freedom you allow yourself. And while this may seem quite obvious, I’ve been involved and observed too many projects that lack real planning. Often, preproduction is a rush-job done quickly in order to get to “the fun stuff.” As one crewmember on a project I worked on a while back put it, there is this tendency to end up with a reverse pyramid among many indie filmmakers.

Here’s what he means. Think of a pyramid, with its wide base and narrow top. Let the wide base represent the amount of time ideally spent in preproduction for a project and the top portion of the pyramid represent the amount of time spent in postproduction (editing and sound mixing, and so forth). The middle then is production, or the amount of time spent actually shooting the film. So the pyramid is divided into three sections. This is just a visual guide for the relative amounts of time we might ideally invest in a project. Spend a good bit of time in preproduction planning your film’s shooting carefully, securing locations, finding actors, getting contracts signed, and working out all of the other detail needed to make your film. This way, you can spend a concentrated amount of time shooting, where you and your crew are able to make the most of the time you have to shoot the film because things have been carefully planned out ahead of time. Even when unexpected surprises pop up (and they most certainly will), because of your preparation, you will be ready to address these surprises and work through them. Then, once filming is done, because things have been planned out well in advance, you can go into the editing room and have the film cut in about half or a third of the time it took you to preproduce the film. Can you see the pyramid?

Now, I know, this is an ideal scenario. And of course, films with quite a few visual effects shots to be created in postproduction will not fit this pyramid scenario exactly (but that’s a different story). But I do think this pyramid servers to demonstrate my point here. What the crewmember I mentioned above meant by his reverse, or upside-down pyramid, is that too often inexperienced indie filmmakers invest very little time planning their production. Then shooting doesn’t go smoothly—big surprise—and production falls behind schedule. In the end, not knowing if what was shot is going to actually cut together as a coherent and effective film, the filmmakers spends quite a long time in postproduction trying to salvage the film in the editing room. This can often be three, four, or five times (if not more) the amount of time they spent in preproduction. There are plenty of nightmare stories of projects dragging on in postproduction for years as the filmmaker behind it tries to come up with a finished product that is coherrent and effective.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this sounds like a pretty self-refuting route to go, as well as being a great way to develop a heart problem from multiple stress attacks that could actually be avoided. Yet, for the new filmmaker the temptation is to shoot first and ask question later. This may be fine for film school, but is not acceptable when you have investors putting money into your project and have hired professional cast and crew.

The Advantages of Planning

Now, let me share with you from personal experience why I love preproduction. The most successful of the short films I have made have all had serious periods of preproduction leading up to a very concentrating production time, always mere days. The longest production period for any short film I’ve directed was five consecutive days. And even that short film would not have been accomplished without serious planning ahead of time. For all of my short films, we have always had months to plan ahead.

One of the things I love about having a lengthy preproduction period is that all of us involved are able to have a life outside of the film itself. More importantly, this also allows time for flaws in the script to come to light and affords us the opportunity to do re-writes because, well, golly-gee, we’ve got the time to do so. In the end, we’ve always arrived at a stronger film because of this.

Having time also allows for a chance to address other problems that may come up. Maybe a location falls through, maybe an actor backs out. Either way, having set aside time to prepare, you and your crew are better able to address these issues.

Planning leads to freedom. There are those out there, and I’ve met some of you, who think that planning stifles creativity. Not true. Not true at all. Quite the opposite. The more you plan, the better you see your options, consider all angles (literally). Let me give you an example.

I am a big proponent of detailed shot lists. I can’t draw very well, but I will even create storyboards for complex scenes, or scenes with a particular camera moves or special effects. The shot list is my guide on set. It allows me to communicate with my cinematographer about what needs to be shot, and how. It allows me to communicate with my actors about what the game plan for the day is. It allows me to communicate to the sound department about where they can best capture audio and what actor they should be covering. The shot list keeps us all on the same page. That’s why I distribute a shot list to all these departs on my films.

But do I always stick to the shot list? No. Filmmaking can be unpredictable. But because I have a game plan and know what I would like to shoot, I am better able to know what shots on my list I can cut to make up for lost time should we (more like, when we) fall behind schedule. At times, I have found that a particular shot we have just taken accomplishes all I wanted from two or three shots I had listed. Suddenly, I may realize I actually don’t need quite as many camera set-ups as I had thought I would. This is a fine position to be in. Ultimately, my shot list is an ideal mental checklist of what I want to accomplish, but I am still free to deviate from it when schedule dictates or serendipity presents a better option.

I can see it already, those of you who don’t like all this planning business are thinking: but Mikel, if filmmaking can be unpredictable, why plan at all? Here’s why. I’ve been on sets before with directors that have not planned, who do not have a shot list. And this is what happens: they stand in the middle of the room, or pace about, scratching their heads or their chins, looking around from one spot to another, and finally thirty, forty, or fifty minutes later, we at last do the first camera set-up for the day. Then, we might do the next set-up the director came up with on the fly, maybe another ... then ... everything stops again while the director tries to think about what to do next and whether or not what was just shot accomplishes all he or she thinks is needed for good editing.

Don’t kid yourself. Unless you are a veteran director, you’re not going to show up on a set and just know what needs to be covered. You’ll either error on the side of thinking you’ve got enough when you don’t (and painfully discover this in the editing room), or error on the side of shooting far too many camera set-ups and fall way behind schedule, wear your actors and crew out, and have more footage than any sane editor wants to deal with. Thus, the best bet is to plan!

Again, I think it is worth repeating that planning does not mean you are locked into a specific method of doing things. It just means that you have already thought through what you’d like to get out of a scene and how to go about getting this. If you show up on set and find something totally new, you at least have a shot list mark and “x” through, flip over to the blank back side, and start writing a new shot list. You can at least eliminte the previous means of shooting a scene and move on to a new means.

Another important part of preproduction is having time to think through the emotional beats of each scene in your script and how you plan on communicating with your actors when shooting. This is something almost totally overlooked by new directors. As Judith Weston points out in her book, Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film & Television, planning how to shoot your film is so much more than just sitting alone in your living room reading the script and picturing the movie in your head. Big deal. So you can see the finished film in your mind. That’s doesn’t mean a damn thing to your cast and crew. Why? Because you haven’t thought about how to communicate this vision! You have the vision, and that’s great. But have you thought about how best to communicate this vision? Because until you have, you are not ready to direct. I believe this is one thing that separates the wanna-bes from the real directors.

I recommend picking up Weston’s book. She really dives into specific techniques like using metaphors to communicate with actors that open up so many possibilities for creating great performances. But again, seeing how best to go about this means dedicating time in preproduction to breaking the script apart, scene-by-scene, beat-by-beat, so that when shooting, you are prepared to actually give direction.

Finally, having ample preproduction time allows for less stress. Having time to rehearse with actors, to talk through the script with them, eases concerns and helps everyone know what needs to be done. Having more time to plan also means that the less-than-fun things like contracts, location releases, union paperwork, call sheets, and all the other managerial work involved in making a film can be accomplished in a timely manner without having to be crammed into a couple of long, stressful days right before the camera rolls. The last thing you should be doing as a director is showing up to the first day of shooting already stressed out and half awake.

As I have gained more experience, I have honestly come to really enjoy preproduction. It is a time where anything is possible. We haven’t started shooting yet, we’re not behind schedule, we’re not facing weather delays or equipment issues. We’re just laying the foundation on which to build a great film. But without that foundation, everything we build on top of it will be shaky, and could even all come tumbling down on top of us mid-process. Great preproduction allows for time to find the potentially unique pitfalls of a given project and gives you the chance to address them well before they cause real problems on set.

Audio for Short Films Part 3: Post-Production Sound

2009-03-30T21:52:00.008-04:00

One aspect of filmmaking that has taken me quite a while to get a good grasp of is post-production sound. Great audio is filled with its own subtle challenges. Just as many talented people dedicate their livelihoods to working in cinematography, editing, lighting, set design, visual effects, and any of the many other specific areas of the filmmaking process, there are plenty of reason why individuals do the same with sound editing and mixing. The truth is, you may have a great picture, but if your sound isn’t very good, audiences will quickly become annoyed and either emotionally or literally abandon your film. That’s never a good thing.

As new filmmakers unable to afford professionals for each of these areas, we’re reduced to having to figure out how best to pull off something workable on our own. While this sounds like a bad deal, there is an upside. When starting out, we should want to learn as much as possible about the various areas of filmmaking, gaining at least a basic understanding and appreciation of the skill and talent it takes to do any one of those jobs well. Beyond that, if you want to make a living in movies, the more you know about each aspect of filmmaking, the better equipped you will be to make wise creative and business decisions as a director and/or producer.

This being the case, I have been heavily involved with the sound editing and mixing for all of my short films, often being one of (if not the only) sounder editor and mixer. However, on the last two short films I’ve had the privilege of directing, I was able to enlist the valuable help of my brother-in-law, Heber Hernandez, whose audio awareness has really made the difference. While I did much of the audio editing, the actual mix was performed with Heber, in an environment he customized for optimal sound. To conclude the three part series on audio for short films, I asked Heber a few questions and thought I would share those here.

Mikel J. Wisler: What experiences did you had before working on mixing sound for Cold October and Always Reaching that helped you?

Heber Hernandez: Definitely the most useful experience was recording and editing radio spots for variety of purposes on different radio stations, and second would be the producing and editing of A/V material for a Hispanic Missionary Church.

MJW: What are some of the most important things to make sure you can create a good sound mix?

HH: First of all, not being hungry. Then once I’m thinking straight, I ensure that the environment is as interruption free as possible. Something that is very important too is that I need to be very familiar with the acoustics of the room, and of course check all the technical stuff like, speakers in-face. Balance is important. I used a decibel meter to ensure that the mixing brain is right in the middle of all the action. [Also important is,] well synchronized audio vs. video. I make sure that there is not an audio enhancement turned on, like an EQ, on the PA system.

MJW: What kind of sound system did you use to mix the sound?

HH: We used a iMac [2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM] running Soundtrack Pro [2], with a Harman Kardon Amp with EV S-40 series Speakers, and a homemade Pioneer subwoofer system.

MJW: How important is well-recorded audio from the set to you as a sound mixer?

HH: In my view there are two aspects to sound mixing: the technical and the artistic. The technical oversees the “audio-glitches” that some how made it through the recording, also keeps an eye on the frequencies, decibels, etc, etc. And the artistic side will ensure a smooth connection between audio mix and the story being told.

For the technical aspect it is critical to have a good on-set recording, as that is the foundation of the mix. Having two or three recordings of each scene from different sources is always a good thing. This will save technical time and will allow the artistic side to have more freedom to be more creative, especially when you are working on a tight schedule.

MJW: How much sweetening do you do to sound (adding sound effects, and layers of environment noise and such)?

HH: It really depends on the scene. Here is more or less the process that we followed when mixing “Cold October” and “Always Reaching:”

First there has to be a clear understanding on what is the message that the director of the film wants to portray. Having that in mind, we took a look at the film and made mental notes of what the end result should sound like. Then the fun stuff begins. Each scene will present its own challenges.

There are three types of audio sweetening that we used. The first, is when we added sound to enhance the mood or message of the scene, this could be anything from music, distant rain or thunder, to a loud bang when someone is getting their head banged.

Second, is to cover for original audio glitches or unwanted noise, this one is very handy but we only used it them when it was near impossible to get rid of the bad stuff. Normally we used ambience noise.

Third, is the one that we didn’t think we needed until by inspiration or mistake we run across something and thought, “WOW. . . that sounded really cool, let’s leave it there!” Usually this doesn’t happen but once in the whole project, but when it does . . . it sure feels good.

MJW: Was there a difference between mixing ADR dialogue and dialogue recorded on set? What do you prefer to mix?

HH: Both present their challenges. Mixing ADR for the most part is very clean, easy to manipulate. ADR is very helpful when there is a scene where the circumstances of the set or the nature of the scene makes it near impossible to have a good on-set recording. But other than that, on-set recording will always end up having a very natural, effortless feel to it (of course, unless you are working for Pixar).

MJW: What are some things about mixing the music into the final sound mix that you try to accomplish?

HH: Depending on the project, sometimes music is a character of it’s own, it’s telling the story, and it should be accentuated through the film. Sometimes it is just there to accentuate a mood or to prepare the viewer for what is to come. Either way something that I try accomplish is . . . to not over do it.

MJW: How did you work with the director in creating the sound mix (be honest, if there's areas I should do better in, I'd like to know. That's why I'm writing these articles, to help me learn more about the craft of filmmaking and improve)?

HH: Working with the director was a huge help, when it comes to setting the mood for a scene; nobody has a better feel for that than him. Certainly for all the clean-up work and the technical part of the mix I feel there is no need of him to be involved, however in this case, I was not familiar with Soundtrack Pro, so his help was needed.

MJW: What were the differences between mixing sound for “Cold October” and for “Always Reaching?” There was a difference in gear used to record the audio on the sets for these two films, did feel this made a difference during the sound mix?
HH: “Cold October” was more technically challenging, we had to deal with too many variants in the environment sounds and the recording gear had its limitations too. So we had to get very creative to compensate for those variants. But when working on “Always Reaching,” the on-set recording was so good that it allowed the artistic side to have more time to come up with those happy accidents.

MJW: What did you learn through this work?

HH: The biggest technical challenge occurred before we started the mix, the interface between Soundtrack Pro and iMac optical output would not work right, we wanted to use a optical output from the Mac to get a 5.1 audio mix output to the receiver, but we could only get a stereo DD signal. I learned quickly that all those people writing in blogs saying that “in theory it should work” . . . they do not know what are they talking about.

Also working with the director enlightened me about the artistic side of the audio mix.

MJW: If you were giving advice to someone about to shoot their first short film, what would you tell them about sound mixing, what they should and should not do, and how to get the best results?

HH: If your budget allows it, rent or buy a decent microphone, it will save a lot of time down the road and even if you don’t have great audio mix software you should still have good results.
Second, keep it simple but with quality.

MJW: Do you have any other comments you would like to share?

HH: When most people are exposed to a film the audio aspect gets overlooked, even though it is fulfilling one of the two senses being exposed. Some regular moviegoers don’t even think about how good or how bad the audio mix was, but that is not a bad thing at all. It is actually a good thing. A bad sound mix will become a distraction. Normally, if it is a good mix, the focus will stay on the story and at the end it is the overall experience that will keep the viewer engaged to the film.

Happy Mixing!!!

Conclusion

My thanks to Heber for being a part of this. Again, he stresses the importance of good mix has on the viewer’s experience of your film. He mentioned as well that we tried to do an actual 5.1 Surround Sound mix for the two films, but ended up defaulting to Stereo due to our inability to monitor all six of the channels separately and accurately during the mixing process. This actually worked out to our advantage in two ways: Simplicity and cost.

Let me explain those two: First of all, there is so much to accomplishing a good sound mix that adding surround to the equation means a whole lot more work and a whole lot more potential for problems. A great stereo mix can be quite effective. In the interest of not overwhelming yourself the on your first sound mixing efforts, it’s probably best to just stick with stereo. Keep in mind too that many film festivals playing short films may not have actual 5.1 Surround Sound available. Or, you may be asked to provide your film on a format that doesn’t support Surround Sound, such as BetaSP, DigiBeta, Mini DV, and so forth. In which case, you’re back to a stereo mix anyway.

The second reason I listed above, cost, has to do with the fact that, as I understand it, technically you need to pay a licensing fee to Dolby for distribution of a film in Surround Sound. So . . . should your short film garner some distribution (which “Cold October” now has), you’d have to pony up some serious cash for that right. And given that most short films end up being sold to TV stations over seas that want to play the film from a Beta or Mini DV . . . well, we’re back to reason one now. So keeping it simple was a great idea.

I certainly hope to get to do a Surround Sound mix at some point. But I also hope that it is for a project with a budget for that. Until then . . .

The Short, the Feature, and the Bias

2009-03-22T18:22:00.016-04:00

“Regrettably the short film subject is often considered beneath the director with serious intentions.” – Michael Rabiger, Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics.

For those of us working in the filmmaking and media world, it should come as no surprise when I state that there seems to be a sort of bias towards feature films in America. Short films are the things of student filmmakers exercises and film festival aficionados. But for the serious filmgoers, it would seem, feature films are where it is at.

This is not the case, however, in other countries. The fact that one of my short films has played on a Canadian cable station dedicated to showing short films is just one example. Much of the sales representation that film enjoys is focused on Canada and Europe. But for some reason, it is pretty hard to shake the off the bias against short films in America. I recall sitting down to show one of my earlier (and crappier) short films to my in-laws (at the time, my soon to be in-laws--how they still loved me and allowed me to their beautiful daughter is a wonder to me). In excited anticipation of seeing the film, my soon to be little bother-in-law asked me how long the film was. “Thirty-seven minutes,” I answered.

“That’s it?” was his disappointed response. And 37 minutes is as long a short film as I’ve dared to make to date. In fact, the more I’ve learned about filmmaker, the shorter films I’ve been making. Ironic, isn’t it? Maybe I just love to disappoint all the people hoping I’ll make something longer, though I really doubt that’s the case. After 37 minutes of the short film I showed them, I’m sure everyone wished I made shorter films. Hell, eventually I wished I had made a shorter film.

But I don’t blame my brother-in-law for his reaction. He’s being brought up in a world of feature films. In a world of epics like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, with its even longer extended editions on DVD. Despite this being the YouTube age, the feature film is still the crowning achievement of the filmmaker in America.

Now, I should point out that I love feature films. Absolutely love them! Hope to get to make my own at some point (got feature scripts just waiting—hint, hint to all potential investors out there). But I want to take a moment to examine the value of short films, and point out that the 90 to 120 minute feature film is not the only venue for expression available to the American filmmaker today.

First of all, I want to consider the above quote. I took it from a book I’m currently reading. In it, the author, Mr. Rabiger, takes some time to explore the value of short films. The entire paragraph that that above quote comes from reads as follows:

Regrettably the short film subject is often considered beneath the director with serious intentions. This is like would-be novelists rejecting poetry and the short story as unworthy mediums. The short film is actually closest to the poetic form, for it requires deft characterization, a compressed narrative style, and something to say that is focused and fresh in voice. A good five- to ten-minute film is actually more demanding to make than a passable thirty minute one. (pg 211)

Whoa, wait, what? It’s harder to make a really short film? No wonder I was making “short” films with running times above the 30-minute mark. Maybe I just lacked brevity. After making enough people sit through those relatively long (even longer feeling) early efforts, I sure think I lacked brevity. Recently, I had a conversation with a fellow aspiring filmmaker, and he admitted he had a hard time coming up with a great concept that would work as a short film. This was why so far he hadn’t made a short of his own. I can totally relate. Workable concepts for short films are really quite difficult. But we’ll get to that. For now, just keep the above quote in mind. We’re going to come back to it.

Feature Film Fixation

So, why are we so fixated on feature films? It could be that in a culture enamored more with the glitzy escapism of big budget films, we find ourselves drawn to the feature film more often. This would make sense in that feature films have a better potential for financial return on investment. So, the most polished, professional films (as in the ones that cost the most to make), tend to be the Hollywood feature films playing at your local multiplex.

But does this fully account for our love for the feature film? No. I seriously doubt that. As a filmmaker who has already written several feature length screenplays, worked on the crew for feature films, and is the avid viewer of feature films, I will also point out that the feature film provides an experience that is unique to it’s scope and running time. Like the novel, the feature does allow us more time and space in which to get to know characters, experience events, and travel through the story. So, in all fairness, the feature film is indeed a magnificent medium. In fact, philosopher Colin McGinn draws a comparison to the dreaming state of mind and the experience of viewing a film. He goes so far as to note the length of most feature films parallels roughly the amount of time the human mind spends in the dream state during the sleep cycle. So maybe we’re sort of hard-wired for the feature film. (see The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact, by McGinn)

The Short End of Things

So now that we’ve validated why we have a feature film fixation . . . what about short films? I thought that in the age of viral videos we were supposed to be getting more and more acclimated to shorter content. Well, we are. And we aren’t. Short content for a funny video you e-mail to all your friends, that’s pure gold. Like the one where the kid’s running around the basketball court and the basketball player throws the ball . . . anyway.

A short film that explores the broken lives of characters, or contains a narrative structure more akin to the feature film, only in a shorter package . . . well, we’re not all going hog wild over those are we? How many of the short films nominated for Oscars this year did you see? Most of the general public probably has no idea that iTunes actually carries most of those short films. You can buy them all for less than what you’d spend on a DVD box set of the latest season of you favorite TV show.

Or for that matter, have you seen “Validation?” This might be the best short film I’ve ever seen! I’d seen it at Heartland Film Festival a while back where it made quite an impression on me. I was excited to see it again in February at the Dam Short Film Festival, where it was screened with three other films all made by Kurt Kuenne that mesh into an amazing collection that tell a broader story. It was an honor to realize one of my short films had made it into a festival where “Validation” had won best comedy the previous year. Let’s take a moment right now to pause and simply observe a great short film in action!

What do you think?

Now back to the discussion at hand. Think of the above quote by Michael Rabiger. Maybe the issue is that like short stories and poetry, short films just can’t seem to find quite as broad of an audience. Maybe short films are viewed as only relevant to students and academics (film intellectuals, if you will). Just like poetry and short stories find more validation in the college literature class, so maybe short films are seen as something relegated to such realms.

Unfortunately, that’s not why most filmmakers make short films. The fact that there are whole film festivals and distribution avenues dedicated exclusively to short films demonstrates that there is more to the appreciation of the short film medium than some obscure class in your college catalogue. The challenge is in coming to understand the medium. Only with understanding can we begin to appreciate. One cannot expect to have the same exact experience with a short film as one might with a feature film. There is an inherent difference in how information can be presented in a short film, and how much time one can be spent presenting that information. Beyond that, most short films are not made with big budgets. Thus, the limitations the filmmakers face are very different from those of the studio feature films we may have grown accustomed to. Ironically, these limitations can lend themselves to a level of brevity and wit that is sadly quite rare in Hollywood feature films.

So a different set of expectations applies, it seems to me. If we become accustomed to these expectations, we are better equipped to appreciate short films, and even loose ourselves in the experience they offer. The best way seems to be regular exposure to the medium (so now you see what I took the time to share a short film I love with you).

Why So Short?

So why make short films? I’ve addressed the question on this blog before. But I feel it deserves more attentions still. In his book, Michael Rabiger suggest that, “For beginners it is essential to work in short form because it is inexpensive and places high demand on control of craft and storytelling essentials (pg 211).” I’ll just point out how interesting it is that he uses the word “essential” and move on.

In the quote I used earlier from Rabiger, he likened short films to short stories and poetry. The very brevity of the short film, as in those shorter literary mediums, means one has to grasp storytelling and characterizing quite well to effectively tell a story in a brief span of time. This is a profoundly important exercise for the creative muscles of the storyteller. Honestly, if you think about it, feature films are still quite limited in the amount of information they are able to present when compared to a novel. It seems that the ability to quickly convey information in key to the filmmaker working with any length of project.

In fact, if Rabiger is right, and the short film is closer in nature to poetry, than the feature film is close in nature to the short story. Think about it. What was the last novel you saw transformed into a feature film? I you were a fan of the book, I’m sure you can list off the characters that were cut from the story, the scenes left out, whole chunks of back story compressed to quick dialogue exchanged between characters . . . whole ideas that never made it into the film. Why is that? Well, the simple fact of the matter is that if you take any regular novel and try to simply film it from the page . . . you won’t be making a feature film . . . you’ll be making something more along the lines of a TV series. Something that will have a total running time of 20 to 100 hours depending on the length of the novel.

And that’s not even taking into account the differences in the mediums. What might be a good read as a novel might be a terrible watch as a film. A movie is first and foremost an experience. If a novel is purely cognitive in nature—maybe it is comprised mostly of thoughtful introspection by an interesting character—there’s little chance it will make a very good film. We call the medium motion picture for a reason.

Thus, with all of this in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that a great feature film has much more in common with the short story than the novel. Great short stories are focused and precise in delivery. In the same way, a great feature film packs in quite a bit of story in two hours by being focused and precise in how it presents information.

And this precision is why I feel grasping the importance of brevity in the short film is so beneficial to the eventual feature film director. If you can tell a focused and powerful story in ten or twenty minutes, think of what you can do with two whole hours. You won’t be wasting your audience’s time. You’ll be really giving them an experience worth their hard earned money and their dwindling free time.

I also believe Rabiger makes another great suggestion that new filmmakers should follow. He encourages them to get busy making short films. Here’s why:

Think of it this way: you can make five eight-minute films for the price of one sixty-minute film. After this you will handle a long film five times as well because you have tackled five sets of demanding conceptual problems such as characterization, blocking, dramatic shape and flow, and editing. You will also have directed a host of actors and given life to a gallery of characters. (pg 211)

So while it can be exciting to think about embarking on that feature film that’s been cooking in your mind for some time now, think of what you can gain by working on some short films first. Trust me, when you do get to make that feature, it will be that much better. It really will. I’m speaking from experience here, having tried to help someone make a first feature. Sadly, this someone really should have gained much more experience first on short films before taking on a feature. A massive undertaking involving dozens of people, a good amount of money, and months of time away from other paid work doesn’t seem like the ideal time and place to try learning the fundamentals of filmmaking. So please, keep that in mind!

Most of us don’t have huge amounts of money lying around to fund a feature film project anyway. So keep in mind too that it is incredibly beneficial to create some sort of calling card, something to catch the eyes of those who can help you make a feature film, and make it the right way. But to catch their eyes, you need to show you have the chops. Rabiger puts it this way, “A superb short film is the ultimate advertisement for what you could do with a bigger canvas (pg 212).”

I think he’s got a great point here. But I want to add something to this point. Many of the short films I’ve made are stories I feel are best told as short films. I’m not so sure they’d expand into feature films quite so well. There’s something to be said about telling a concise story, and telling it well. There’s something satisfying about it. So yes, I do make short films because I hope to use that as “the ultimate advertisement” for what I hope to do with feature films. But at the same time, I don’t make just any short film. I have to first be moved and compelled by the idea for the film, the story itself. No matter how you dice it, a short film is still a hell of a lot of work. So, it better be worth it! You’d better be feeling this thing under your skin, ready to burst out. It should hopefully feel like a story you need to express somehow, so you might as well give it a means to be told, and told well.

In other words, like much in life, there are multiple levels of motivation here. But the moral of the story is: short films are a rightful medium of their own. Learning to respect and love them will open up a whole new realm of the motion picture experience. I think it is incredibly valuable to appreciate what short films have to offer that one cannot find in a feature film, both from the perspective of filmmaking and film viewing.

Your First Time on a Film Crew

2009-02-26T15:29:00.004-05:00

So you’ve got yourself a job on a film set. That’s great news. Even if it is unpaid, that’s still great news. In fact, most first time film gigs are unpaid production assistant work, or intern work. This is to be expected. It’s a means to get your foot in the door. After all, if you have no experience working on a film set, you have little bargaining power, frankly. That is, unless you possess a specific set of skills (like make-up design, or set design, or costumes, or special effects) that you have acquired in other work—such as the theatre—that makes you a bit of a hot commodity to a given production. Most of us, however, don’t start off that way. And that’s to be expected. So embrace that and get in there. There is a very specific flow to working on most film sets, and being able to be introduced to it without the added stress of being a head of specific department is usually a good way to go.

My first experience on a film crew outside of school was during my final weekend in Los Angeles where I had spent the semester at the Los Angeles Film Studies Center in 2003. My filmmaking professor was directing a short film at the time, which was shot on 16mm. She’d put together a crew with experienced people at the helm of the various departments and the production was slated for one day (one long day) that final weekend of the spring semester. I was faced with the option of working for free on her short film as one of the crewmembers, or having one last weekend to wonder around LA. It was tempting to just be a bum and go do something very LA-ish since I’d had quite an intense semester. However, and I now recognize this, what could be more LA-ish that working on a film? I chose to be on the crew. It was totally worth it!

After a semester of learning theory, of shooting student projects, of starring at my computer screen wondering where the next page for my feature script for screenwriting class was going to come from, of immersing my mind in the history of Hollywood, it was the most satisfying thing to just be on a set, with a very specific job, and watch people who knew a whole hell of a lot more than I did at the time do their thing. I was the production’s dolly grip. And seeing as the camera spent an awful lot of time on the dolly, I was pretty busy.

I would call this experience my first real film set experience. And, as I have alluded to already, after a semester of studying filmmaking, this was a wonderfully solidifying experience for what I’d been learning—for what at the time was only beginning to germinate in my mind: that film is a magical medium of collaboration and careful execution; that no one person makes a film, but one can sure break a film; that the process is as much a part of the storytelling as the final experience of viewing the film.

This is why I feel it is important to get onto film sets and work as much as you can afford to (obviously you can’t just keep taking unpaid work if you are to pay the bills). But those first few times of working on a set are so highly educational that the experience is worth so much more that mere cash. For one thing, if you prove yourself a worthwhile crewmember, you’re very likely to be invited to work on more film, hopefully in paid capacities. But also, if you are hoping to become a filmmaker yourself, watching and understanding the process is so very important.

Hands-on learning in filmmaking is invaluable. Weather you get that through making short films and student projects, or by working on crews for short and feature films, what you can learn will only make you a better filmmaker. And I really mean that. I’ve worked on a wide range of projects, some great, some quite short of greatness. What the good projects show you are the right ways of accomplishing things. What the not so good projects show you are the pitfalls to avoid. An astute new filmmaker makes careful mental notes (or even literal notes) of these things and seeks to incorporate the good and evade the bad in her own projects.

In fact, it is for this very reason that I pity the poor unenlightened soul that decides to embark on any sort of ambitious filmmaking venture without first amassing some experience by working on film projects (either by making doable short films or working on the crew of experienced filmmakers). Don’t kind yourself. Filmmaking is art, business, and teamwork all rolled into one. Those are all distinctly different aspects of the process of filmmaking that no one person fully grasps alone. And because of that, no one—and I mean, not a one of you out there reading this blog—is a born filmmaker. Sorry, but you’re not. I’m not. None us are. Martin Scorsese wasn’t either!

So embrace the learning experience! Don’t be in such a hurry to become a filmmaker that you destroy your film career before it starts. So if you need more experience, seek out those opportunities to gain that experience. And if you do get such an opportunity, here are some helpful tips to help you make the best of it.

What You Should Expect On Set

For the sake of this article, I’m going to assume that the production we’re talking about here is a pretty good-sized production with a mostly experienced crew. A few years ago, after I’d directed several short films of my own, I got the chance to work as a production assistant on the set of a feature film being shot on 35mm, with SAG actors, and an experienced crew. I was there for the duration, day one to wrap. This experience was so educational that it has allowed me to take some big steps forward in my own filmmaking, as well as taking on tasks such as being the 1st Assistant Direction for a feature film the following year. Without this experience, I highly doubt I’d be where I am today.

With that in mind, here’s some advice I’d share with anyone walking on to a set for the first time to be an intern or production assistant:

1. Jump in with both feet. Interns and production assistants (often the same thing) are there to help things move along and keep production going. So be prepared to take on the menial tasks. In fact, jump at the opportunity. It only took two days on the set of that first feature film for my self and my friend Dan to become known as the “Uber Interns.” If it needed done, we were on it! It didn’t matter if it was helping to move gear, set dress a location, fetch a cast member from the trailer, or make a Starbucks run. We were there, we were willing, and we did it with diligence.

2. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. You’re going to mess up. Get over it right now. In fact, the best thing you can do is to take full responsibility for your mistakes. If you do something wrong (and I made loads of mistakes on that first feature), admit it. Own up to it. Apologize and ask how you can help correct that mistake. In my experience, most people on film crews are quite willing to forgive you for a mistake and to help you understand how the process works and how you can avoid the same mistake again.

3. Now avoid repeating those mistakes! You’ll find that most people on a set are quite gracious. But don’t push your luck. When I was the 1st AD for a feature film, I had one particular individual who was simply not on top of his work, and he cost us precious time on the set waiting for him to get his act together. Eventually he was fired. He kept making the same mistakes. He was quite apologetic about it. But in the end, if there’s no change in such a person’s behavior, nothing is being learned. It’s not worth the production’s time to keep someone like that around. Don’t let that be you!

4. Don’t expect to always be around the action. As a crewmember at the bottom of the pecking order, you might be spending most of a night stopping traffic during takes and you may not be anywhere near the actual shooting. Don’t let this get you down. The work you are doing is making the filmmaking process for this project possible. So do it to the best of your ability. Trust me, it will be noticed. And if you do well with the menial tasks, it won’t be long before bigger and better responsibilities are entrusted to you. But you have to be prepared to earn that trust!

5. Ask questions. When appropriate (and be sure you know when it is and isn’t appropriate), engage people above you on the crew in conversation and ask them questions about their jobs. It’s amazing what you can learn (things like if you plug in the banded cable from the generator into the distro box in the wrong order, you can electrocute yourself to a quite dead crisp). Learn all you can. In fact, don’t pretend like you know more that you do. If someone asks you to do something, say, to grab a half CTB and some C-47s, and you haven’t a clue what those are, just say so. This is an opportunity to learn. You’ll actually help thing move along faster if you just admit you don’t know what those are rather than walking out to the grip truck and standing there like idiot hoping some voice from heaven will tell you that CTB is a blue gel and that C-47s are just regular dumb old clothes pins. In fact, there are so many specific names for the vast variety of tools and techniques used in filmmaking that even with several year of experience I find that I’m still learning an awful lot every time I go on set. Even on projects that I’ve been the cinematographer for I’ve had to stop at times and ask my gaffer or grips for a clarification on what they’re talking about. So, the lesson here is, don’t let pride get in the way of learning.

6. Use your brain! Observe. Keep your eyes peeled. Watch how the set works. Know things like, the 1st AD is head of the crew. Most questions you might have that seem like something the director should answer, those actually should be asked to the 1st AD. If the AD doesn’t know the answer, he or she can ask the director when appropriate. Never bypass the AD and go to the director unless you have established a working relationship with the director on that set (such as when my friend Dan became the official Video Assist PA and worked closely with the director for where to position the video monitor so the director could watch the takes being shot). As a PA or intern, don’t try striking up conversations with the director during shooting. The more you observe, the better you can understand how a set works, why certain creative choices are made, and why certain business choices are made.

7. Keep a good attitude. If you have a positive attitude, this will be noticed and appreciated. And remember that a positive attitude doesn’t mean always being talkative. There are times to talk and joke around with your new friends on a set, and there are times when that is not at all appropriate. So, common sense here is the name of the game. And know that filmmaking is an awful lot of “hurry up and wait.” You’ll be scrambling to rig up a light, or finish set dressing, and then suddenly you have nothing to do while actual takes are being shot. Just how it works. But through it all, keep a good attitude and work hard.

Okay, so those are more or less my basic seven things I’d suggest you keep in mind if you’re setting foot on a set for the first time. If you manage to do those, you’ll be in pretty good shape. You’ll be in a great position to learn more through the experience. I certainly hope you have a great experience and that you learn a lot. Don’t be afraid to have a little notebook with you so you can jot down observations during down times on set. And ultimately, have fun. You’re helping make movie. How cool is that?

Audio for Short Films Part 2: ADR and Foley.

2009-02-03T18:22:00.008-05:00

So now that you’re in postproduction, your film has all been shot, the crew sent home, what happens if you need more sound? Let me assure you that this is naturally part of the filmmaking process. In fact, as nice as it might be to gather every single extra sound effect you might need for your film during shooting, most of the time the schedule simply does not allow for this (especially on indie films). In fact, in some situations stopping everything just to grab what are called “wild tracks” of sounds during shooting may indeed be irresponsible use of the crew’s and actors’ time. Often, these sounds, referred to as Foley, are something that you or someone else can go off and record on their own once shooting has wrapped.

Gathering Foley

Many time, it’s hard to know what extra sound effects you will need until you are cutting your film. You might find that the sound of a door slamming you recorded on set during the actual take just doesn’t carry the weight and impact you were hoping for. You might actually need to get a different door slam and replace the one from the actual take with this new sound effect.

There are a few ways you can go about gathering foley sound effects and even specific environment sounds for creating ambiance for a scene. If you have access to a program with free sound effects, look through that database first, see if there is anything in there you can use. Chances are, these will be very high quality, clean sounds you can add effects to, equalize to your hearts content, and place in your film. I’ve had good experiences finding such things in Apple’s Soundtrack Pro, particularly environment sounds, such as rain, which I later equalized to sound like it was recorded inside a building while it rained outside (by knocking a lot of the highs off). Often times the name of the game is to layer two or more sounds to get the extra effect you want. In one instance I grabbed the sound of cracking wood, the sound of a hard impact, and the sound of glass breaking to create the audio of a kick that broke in a door and struck objects inside the apartment once opened, such as pictures on the wall.

Another way to gather high quality sound effects is to search the web. There are free effects out there, but I find that most often you are better off going to a well organized library of sound effects where you can pay a few dollars per sound clip you wish to download. This way, you can go though and sample folly sounds in various categories and buy just the ones that will work for your project. It’s really pretty inexpensive, and if you end up only needing two or three sound clips, you’ll spend less than ten dollars at most places. You can search for free sounds effects, but be careful. Too often free sound effects are either low quality or simply cheesy foley sounds that don’t sound real at all. You’re better off paying a few bucks. In fact, for my purposes, if Soundtrack Pro doesn’t have it, I go to a pay-per-download database of effects on the web and just buy what I need. I don’t waste my time looking for free ones. I should also note here that there are extensive sound effects libraries one can buy as a whole to have at your finger tips. In my experinece, you’ll end up paying a lot of money for something you’ll only use 5% of.

The last way to gather foley, and often the most fun, is to actually go record your own sounds. Let’s face it, sometimes things just need to be catered directly to your project. And in this way, you maintain the uniqueness of your project’s identity. I have used a Mini Disk recorder and my shotgun mic very effectively for this, gathering all kinds of sounds that have filled in the gaps in the audio mix of my short films. In fact, that’s the whole reason I still hold on to my Mini Disk recorder, because it is so portable and so capable of recording very clear, clean sound. One time, for my short film, “Cellar Door,” my friend Brenan Campbell (who did that sound mix with me) and I recorded a creaking door with my Mini Disk recorder. We then loaded that sound into the computer in the studio we were using to mix the sound. We slowed down the creaking door sound so the creaking became a strange sort of hum/rumble. We played that through the studio monitors, places a very large (6-inches wide by three feet long) think cardboard tube in front of one of the audio monitors and a mic at the opposite end of the tube to capture the cavernous sound. It was quite the creepy effect we created. It was recorded again into the Mini Disk recorder, since the studio computer was tied up playing that sound for us. The effect was great, wholly otherworldly, just what I wanted for that climatic and frightening scene of the film, a bass-heavy rush of adrenaline and very foreboding.

If you do not have the luxury of a portable audio recording device, the next best option is to hook up a good mic to your video camera and simple go record sounds directly to tape (or memory card, as the case may be). With most video editing systems, you have the option to capture just audio. This can save you some hard drive space, since all you really want is the sounds you’ve recorded, not the random video of you standing in you bathtub with a plunger making blood sucking zombie sounds.

Once you have gathered your foley, make sure you create a folder in your NLE’s project just for foley sounds. You may even want separate categories like: environments, weapons, impacts, cars, and so forth. That way, should you have multiple options for a particular sound effect, you can easily find them when you decide that the foley sound you had put in is no working.

ADR

Now, certainly you will end up needing more than just sound effects replaced in your film. Dialogue often has to be replaced in films. The name of the game is to try to get the best audio you can on set. But sometimes that’s just not going to be the case. For my short films, “Cold October” and “Always Reaching,” we did our best to grab good audio on set. But both films had scenes that took place outside, by a river, in the middle of a city. With the combination of fluctuating traffic noise and shifting wind, cutting between the audio of one take to the audio of another was just awful. At times the voices of the actors were almost obliterated by wind or cars. Onr take would be fairly clean, the next would have a truck rumbling by and wind blowing. Cutting such audio together just isn’t going to happen. We could have stood there for hours (with changing light, mind you) and tried to get perfect audio between all these variables. But there was a schedule to keep to, and as long as our shots were looking good, we just had to move on.

Thus, in both instances, ADR (additional dialogue recording, or automatic dialogue replacement) was required. For that, we were fortunate enough to go into a small studio. If you can’t get into a studio, try to find a quiet room you can set your computer up in. Then, hang some blankets on the walls, fill it with pillows, anything that can dampen the sound. You want clean audio that is virtually devoid of a sense of space. You can create that sense of space by applying reverb and careful equalization. Some audio editing programs have advanced effects to help you with that. But you need to start with clean and very clear audio. If you’re not able to use a recording studio, I would recommended using the same microphone that was used on set to record sound, this way you should have a very even match in sound quality.

If you are fortunate enough to use a recording studio, be sure it’s sound proofed and padded. Hopefully the studio will have a selection of microphones. On my last venture into ADR during the postproduction of “Always Reaching,” we used two microphones to record the audio to independent, dedicated tracks. That way, I could use a shotgun mic from above the actress doing the ADR (for a similar sound to what would have been captured on set), and I had a high-end vocal mic from the studio directly in front of the actress as well. This simply gave Heber Hernandez, with whom I did the sound mix for that film, and I the option of picking the sound quality that fit best with the film. In the end, we went with the studio mic. It was a clean, full, rich sound that played well with the images and felt consistent with the on-set audio still used in other scenes.

Now, a very important thing about ADR is trying to recreate the performance. So, be prepared to take time with you actors to enter into the character again and deliver a good performance. Trying to get lost in the moment again weeks after shooting is no easy thing. That is why ADR most often just doesn’t do the trick for many directors. The performance can be stiff, lifeless, and flat. Even the best of actors hate ADR. It’s not the same as being on set and playing opposite another actor. This is where a temptation to do ADR with multiple actors might come up. I would caution against that. Most often, you should do ADR for only one actor at a time. That way, you can focus solely on one person’s performance and do as many takes as needed. And in this way, you avoid having another body in what will likely be a small space, and you don’t waste one actor’s time while you ask them to just sit and wait while you end up working with another actor.

Your actors will need the ability to see and hear the scene you are recording ADR for. And this brings up another good point; don’t try doing ADR for individual, unedited takes. Cut your scenes first with the on-set audio. The original audio should be there as reference. In fact, you should be at a picture lock before you do ADR.

This is how I have done ADR in the studio: We have Final Cut Pro and ProTools running on the same computer. My ADR recordist, Brenan Campbell, will then create a sequence in Final Cut where he will copy and paste the very small chunk of the scene (often just one line of dialogue) several times so that what we end up with is a two or three minute audio and video loop of just that one segment. We will then show the actor the segment and let them practice a couple of times. The actor should have a set of headphones that gives him only the sound coming from the original audio (not from his mic). Then, once the actor is ready, Brenan jumps over to Pro Tools, hits record, we all toss our headphones on to monitor sound, and Brenan jumps back into Final Cut, brings up the looped sequence and makes a full screen display of it that the actor can easily watch while recording ADR. Do as many takes as you need. You can even try synchronizing a few takes to the original scene quickly to get a feel for how things are lining up, but don’t take too much time doing this. You’re actor’s time is precious too, and they don’t need to sit there in the studio while you edit audio.

Don’t be surprised if you need to equalize your ADR to make it fit with the scene. You will also need room tone, or environment sounds, for the scene for which you’ve done ADR. A scene with sound that is too clean and lacting in environment will feel unnatural. If you’re characters are standing in a cave, there will be echo to their voices as well as natural cave tones. If they are standing outside in a wide-open space, there may be no echo or reverb at all, but also hardly any bass to their voices. There would also be some breeze, birds, or any such sound appropriate for an exterior space. You’ll have to play with such effects, equalization, and environment sounds until you have a good solution. But that happen in our next step: Sound Mixing.

Audio for Short Films, Part 1: Production Audio Recording

2008-11-17T15:30:00.004-05:00

An often-overlooked aspect of good filmmaking by many a young aspiring filmmaker embarking on those early productions and short films is sound. Good sound can really make or break a film. You may have a good looking image, but if your sound is not any good, it can quickly become not just a distraction that pulls the audience out of the experience you are trying to create with your film, it can be down right annoying—like fingernails of a chalk board. So, to any new filmmakers out there reading this, let me stress that it is worth taking some time to really learn more about good audio because it will really help your projects stand out (in a good way).

An important point to keep in mind is that, as I alluded to above, a film is an experience. As I have touched on before in this blog, there is a sticking similarity between Plato’s Cave Allegory and the experience of the modern movie theatre. Part of the experience for the poor shackled people in Plato’s allegory is the sound they hear bouncing around the cave, which they in turn believe to be coming from the large shadows cast upon the wall before them. Sound has the power to transport the mind and emotions. In our modern cave of the movie theater we have 5.1 (and I’m sure in many places, 7.2) surround sound. All of this contributes to the experience the filmmakers are creating into which the audience is expected to immerse itself like the chained subjects in the Cave Allegory.

Now, I’m not about the launch into a discussing on surround sound. I’m not qualified for that at this time, hardly any new filmmakers have access to the proper equipment and mixing facility to properly pull off a 5.1 surround sound mix anyway. The truth is, if you’re a new filmmaker, don’t even think of trying that. One step at a time. Master working with stereo frist. A good stereo mix is quite challenging as is. But the good news is that a well executed stereo sound mix for your short film is within your reach, and can be just as engaging as the more flashy surround sound mixes out there, if done well.

In this first entry, we will focus on recording good sound while shooting.

Production Audio

In order to write this entry, I enlisted the help of friend and fellow filmmaker, Jeffrey Martin. Martin served as the on-set sound recorder/mixer for the last two short films film I directed: “Cold October” and “Always Reaching.” I asked Martin a series of questions.

MJW: What experiences have you had before that helped you while working on sets of “Cold October” and “Always Reaching” recording the sound?

Martin: The first film set I worked on was a professional set for a feature film. This was a fantastic way to start my career, because it immediately impressed upon me that film required long hours of hard work. But I fell in love with it, and was willing to put in the hours for future films.

This positive mindset was very valuable when it came to working on “Cold October” and “Always Reaching.” Because they were short films, with non-professional crews, it would have been easy to slack off and just enjoy the camaraderie of hanging out with fellow film lovers. But I already knew I was there, not only to give Runaway Pen my best effort, but also to further my career in the film industry.

Much of filmmaking, like most art forms, is part technical expertise, and part artistry. Because making a film is such a huge undertaking, individual jobs tend to have more of one or the other aspect. On “Cold October,” I was the entire on-set sound department, which meant I had to draw on my experience with electronic sound equipment, as well as the ear training I had developed from many years of studying and performing music.

My training in music and theatre was the main thing that gave me the credentials to record sound for a film, even though I have no training in recording sound. I have studied and performed on a plethora of musical instruments over the last 25 years, and for the last few years have been a semi-professional classical singer. This musical training gave me the skill to listen to the sound I was recording not just as individual words and environmental noises, but also as though it were a symphony of interacting sounds, working together to create the whole.

MJW: How important is good sound recording to a production?

Martin: More important than the average filmgoer realizes. I've heard, and from my personal film viewing experience, I agree that sound makes up half of any film or TV show. Film is not a live medium; the sounds and images recorded on set undergo significant editing both in choosing and cutting together the best takes, and in sculpting those superior takes to further improve their quality (e.g. correcting color, removing extraneous noises). Ultimately, it's up to the sound editor to create the symphony that is the completed sound mix, but the better the raw material they have to work with, the better the final product can be.

It's easy to take crystal clear dialogue and make in muddy. It's virtually impossible (and a huge pain, not to mention time consuming) to take muddy dialogue and make it clear. So the primary job of the on-set sound recorder is to make sure that the sound editor has clear sound to work with.

MJW: What steps did you take on these sets to record the best possible audio?

Martin: The foundation of recording good sound is having good equipment to work with. The next most important thing is to make sure that the recording equipment is in good working condition. Each day, I re-assembled all the pieces of sound equipment to ensure that they were properly and securely connected. In the middle of filming [“Cold October”], I recommended that the production purchase a new cable to replace some of the jerry-rigged connectors that we had been using. Having equipment in proper working order freed me to concentrate on each moment of recording sound, rather than being distracted by having to care for inferior equipment.

MJW: What differed between your experience on “Cold October” and on “Always Reaching?”

Martin: There were two main differences between the recording process for “Cold October” and “Always Reaching.” The most significant was that the microphone we used on “Always Reaching” was of a vastly superior quality. . . . [T]he microphone quality has an overall effect on the equipment's ability to record clear, accurate, quality sound. The microphone we used on “Always Reaching” yielded a richness that had been lacking in “Cold October.”

“Cold October” was my first experience recording sound on a film. Theoretically, I had the necessary expertise. I had well trained ears, I knew how to connect and care for the electronic sound equipment, and I had a basic theoretical knowledge of how to use the sound equipment to best record the actors, while minimizing interference from environmental sound. But I had never put all these skills together, and without actual experience, everything did not go perfectly. Sometimes I set the recording level inappropriately. Sometimes I didn't have the microphone in the very best place. I would give myself a grade of about 85% for the quality of the sound I recorded on set. Since I was working by myself to both operate the boom and set the sound levels, I was not able to concentrate 100% on either task all the time.

For most of the “Always Reaching” shoot, I had a boom operator, and was able to concentrate on setting the sound levels, and even adjusting them during a take. This was extra valuable because one of the actors (Jennie [Sophia]) used a broader dynamic range in her performance--at various times whispering, sobbing, and screaming, each requiring the sound levels to be adjusted.

MJW: I think your experience on “Cold October” is a lot like what many people experience on low-budget short films, where there just isn’t enough money to get all the ideal equipment one would like to have. But I think these experiences are highly education. And I think you made the best of it, and I appreciate that so much! Now, did you mostly work alone or with other people?

Martin: No one works alone on a film set! Being in charge of the sound department, I had virtual veto power over whether shooting could proceed. If there was too much environmental noise, I encouraged the director to wait before shooting. At other times, I reassured him that shooting could continue in spite of noise that the microphone wasn't picking up.

When I had a boom operator, I worked closely with them to ensure that I knew where they were placing the microphone, and where they might move it during the take, so I could anticipate where to set the sound levels.

MJW: Do you feel the director helped make your job easier or more difficult (be honest, one of my objectives in writing blog articles like this is to learn how to improve as a director, so I would love to know if I should be doing things differently to make everyone's life on set better)?

Martin: I tend to work well in groups where everyone has a clearly defined role. Film is great for this, because even though everyone knows multiple things, there is always one person in charge of each element. The director and producers are overseers of the entire film project, but on set a good director focuses on guiding the actors' performances and allows everyone else to do their job. Mikel is such a director. He is available when I have questions, he cares about each aspect of the production, but he trusts his crew. This openness and trust makes me want to work even harder for him, improving the overall quality of the film.

MJW: Wow. Thank you. That is humbling. I hope to continue in that same spirit. Now, if you were giving advice to someone about to shoot their first short film, what would you tell them about sound recording, what they should and should not do, and how to get the best results?

Martin:

For the director/producer:

1) Borrow or rent the best quality microphone you can find/afford.

2) Remember that sound is half the film (picture is the other half).

3) *Never* assume you can fix it in post!

For the person actually recording the sound:

1) Keep it simple--just record the sound, as cleanly as possible, and let the sound editor take it from there.

2) Don't get too caught up listening to the dialogue; that's the director and actors job. Listen to the sound as though it is music, and keep part of your mind focused on listening for background sounds that might ruin a take.

MJW: Great advice. Do you have any other comments you would like to share?

Martin: Making a film is like writing, producing and recording a play, writing, performing and recording a symphony, creating numerous paintings (approximately 1 per scene), and planning a complicated party, all rolled up into and focused on one thing: telling a story. The more talented each person is who works on the film, and the harder everyone works, the better the end product. No one of the many people working on a film makes or breaks it, but everyone can choose to push it towards awesomeness, or let it slide into banality.

Conclusion

In working on a short film, keep in mind what Martin has stressed above, that acquiring good audio on set will always pay off in post-production. The better the sound, the better the overall quality of the film. So, seek to place microphones well, using a fairly directional mic. There are plenty of good manuals out there that can give you good guidance on what kinds of microphones to use for outdoor or indoor recording, as well as distance and placement of such microphones. Of course, where a microphone can be placed is largely dependent on the frame. So keep in mind that director, cinematographer, and boom operator all need to communicate with each other and know what each shot will be, how much dialogue will be covered, and which character the shot will be focused on.

For “Cold October,” we used an Audio-Technica ATR55 shotgun mic directly into the camera. Jeff Martin monitored the sound with Sony headphones. For “Always Reaching,” we predominantly used an Oktave MK-12 for indoor recording. It was run into a Shure FP33 mixer where it was split into two channels, with one at regular recording levels, and one as a back up at a softer level. This way, should an actor suddenly shout and peak on the first channel, we would likely still have good audio on the second channel. Finally, the audio was sent to camera as a stereo signal. Both films were boomed above or below frame for each shot, aside from shots such as the 360-degree “steady cam” shot in “Cold October.”

Now, what if you do your best to get good sound on set, and you still end up with sound that is not usable? This does happen. In fact, from my experience, you plan to get all your audio on set, but in the end, you still end up with some messy sound in places. So what next? Can an independent filmmaker expect to do ADR? What about Foley and sound effects? We’ll talk about that in part two.

Behind "Cold October": The Making of a HDV Special Effects Short Film

2008-10-15T14:35:00.047-04:00

I had already directed a fairly successful short film in the psychological thriller genre titled “Cellar Door,” (click here to read about making “Cellar Door”) so it may come as no surprise that I might want work in that genre again. However, I am prone to trying new things, especially as I develop as a new filmmaker. So, yes, I chose to work on another psychological thriller. Only this one would be quite different from “Cellar Door.”

Where “Cellar Door” was atmospheric, heavily influenced by the directing style of filmmakers like Terrence Malick and Wim Wenders, this new film would be faster, with more dialogue, more action, and . . . more special effects. This new project, “Cold October,” centered on the story of one man’s struggle with a sleep disorder that caused him to experience hallucinations. These hallucinations play a key role in the story and presented a new challenge for us. Just as on “Cellar Door,” Andrew Gilbert and I co-wrote the script and produced the film together. Gilbert worked behind the camera as the director of photography (which he also did on “Cellar”). Joining him in the camera depart was his sister, Ashley Gilbert, who often operated the camera for scenes in which Gilbert played an on-screen supporting role (Jeff, our protagonist’s best friend).

Much of what we learned on “Cellar Door” made “Cold October” possible (which is why I won’t detail all those items now, but if you are interested, you can read about it here). We used the same shooting process, shooting the film on HDV (High Definition Video), a compressed HD format that is recorded to Mini DV tapes. We used the same camera, the Sony HDR-FX1. We also used a program called DV Film Maker to take our footage, shot natively in 1080i60, and convert it to 1080p24 (that’s video with an HD resolution of 1,080 vertical pixels being converted from 60 interlaced frames per second to 24 progressive frames per second). This was the exact process we used on “Cellar” to achieve the cinematic cadence of film, which runs at 24 fps.

Still from the "Cold October" featuring Brittany Fried and Matthew Eaton.

One way we did differentiate between our shooting for “Cold October” and all our previous projects is that we chose to spend a little more money on our tape stock, purchasing Maxell Professional Mini DV tapes made specifically with HDV shooting in mind (Maxell DV-M63MASTER). The two main advantages we sought to tap into were a supposed decreased chance of tape dropout and higher signal to noise ratio. Based on how much footage we’d shot for “Cellar Door,” we purchased only ten reels (10 and 1/2 hours). We shot a total of about nine reels during principal photography, which spanned two weekends in October and November of 2007. The total cost of this shooting stock came to just over $63. That’s more than doubling the price I normally pay for Sony Premium Mini DV tapes I do all the rest of my shooting with. But, not a bad investment if one feels the results justify it. Keep in mind that this Maxell stock we used is still cheaper than the Sony HDV stock.

But, how do I feel this new stock performed? Well, as for the decreased chance of dropout, I wasn’t too impressed upon capturing the footage. For “Cellar Door,” which was shot using the Sony Premium tapes I usually use, I had no tape dropouts that I can recall. With “Cold October,” however, I did find three or four instances of tape dropout, which in HDV is problematic, because this means that at least 15 frames are ruined (due to the long GOP format of storing information 15 frames at a time). So, on that mark, I felt less than enthusiastic about the Maxell tapes. Sorry Maxell.

As for the higher signal to noise ratio, I think the tapes stood up to the hype. We had a cleaner image with “Cold October” than we did with “Cellar Door.” Now, no doubt, this is due in part to just how meticulously we checked and rechecked our exposure setting when shooting. We used both the zebra exposure stripes in camera (set to 80%) and a Minolta light meter calibrated to match with the gain settings on the FX1 (note that we did our best to always shoot with 0 dB gain due to increased noise levels when boosting the chip sensitivity). After our experiences of having to brighten underexposed shots in “Cellar” (a process that HDV is very ill-suited for due to the amount of compression) that introduced a fair amount of noise into our shots, we were determined not to make the same mistakes again. I think we succeeded. Combined with the higher signal to noise ratio of the Maxell tapes, I feel the overall clarity of colors and fairly clean blacks in the footage for “Cold October” does serve as an example of what more expensive HDV tape stocks like this can offer.

Much of the shooting process was the same as “Cellar Door।” We used many of the same lights, dolly, and crane. I did purchase a professional Manfrotto tripod before this production, which certainly made a big difference in panning and tiling shots, and was much more user-friendly than my previous set of sticks. I also was able to borrow some lighting gear from Evermore Pictures, one of the companies behind the feature film Silk Trees. The highlight of that borrowed gear was the three 2,000 watt Fresnels and stands we got to use. We didn’t have that kind of firepower in our lighting kit. Borrowing these lights was a good thing, considering the exterior night scenes we shot in which we needed those 2K Fresnels to simulate large streetlights, and even a bit of moonlight. We even stashed on 2K and one 750 Source Four par (equal in light output to most 1K instruments) outside the windows of the first floor apartment we were shooting in to create a sun-set effect for one of the dialogue scene. We drew the blind, letting them cast shadows along the walls. I’m quite pleased with the results—what I’ve labeled as my lighting homage to Casablanca (though it still doesn’t come anywhere as close to Casablanca as I might dream).

The lights outside providing the "sun-set."

The final effect inside.

The Special Effects

Knowing the effects would present a new challenge, I performed several tests in advance. There is one scene in which, Henry, the main character played by Matthew Eaton, sees a woman’s face in the sink. Unlike other composite shots, which I’d done many times before, this shot needed to be locked into the environment of the sink. To add to the difficulty of the shot, I was determined to shoot it hand-held. Having just purchased a new 24-inch iMac 2.8 GHz Core 2 Due with 2 GB RAM and Final Cut Studio 2, I set about learning how to perform motion tracking in Apple’s Motion 3. After some testing (which you can see bellow) I was satisfied I could pull off the shot. And despite Gilbert’s cautious warnings that we should shoot an alternate version of the shot that would be completely still, we never did shoot more than a few hand-held takes of the shot into which the effect needed to be added. We just ran out of time. Which didn’t ultimately matter, since I’m a quite pleased with the motion tracking in the hand-held shot.

To get the footage of the young woman’s face in the sink, we had our lead actress, Brittany Fried (now Brittany Baughman—she got engaged during production) lay down in a bathtub filled with water. We locked the camera on the tripod, pointed down at her, and had her submerge and look out from bellow the surface. I later slowed the footage down using Motion’s Optical Flow slow motion. The final result is quite haunting. Optical Flow, like Time Remapping in Adobe After Effects, takes non-slow-motion footage and allows you to make smooth slow-motion shots by creating the missing frames. Normally, when slowing down regular footage, one tends to get a very jumpy image that stutters along quite abruptly. This happens because there are only 24 or 30 frames for each second of footage. Slowing that footage down means now that there are only 10 or 15 frames to show each second (or less if you really slow it down). To have smooth slow-motion, you need more frames so that even if the footage is played slowly, you are still watching at least 24 fps. That’s where Optical Flow comes in. It creates the frames in between the ones you already have, so that slow-motion playback is smooth. In essence, think of Optical Flow as borrowing from the one of the concepts for the special effects in The Matrix, which needed to create artificial missing frames between the actual frames shot for their special effects sequences in order to achieve a smooth slow-motion tracking shot around a character.

I used Optical Flow again for a time ramp shot in which the main character passes someone in a hallway and, becoming suspicious of this person, turns to look at him. At the turn, I slowed the footage down significantly. The shot was done at regular speed (60i fps before conversion to 24p). What I did then was to do the ramp effect in the shot with the footage still in its native 60i fps. That meant Optical Flow would be more accurate by needing to create fewer missing frames. We also shot this footage with a higher shutter speed, getting less motion blur on the character’s movements. Once the slow-motion effect was completed, I converted the shot to 24p using DV Film Maker and plugged it into the Final Cut sequence. The result is remarkable, I think. Optical Flow is a great tool for all of you out there, like me at the moment, who own a camera that is not able to shoot in high-speed frame rates for true slow-motion. Keep in mind that if you do this trick it is helpful to do some tests before hand, and establish an acceptable shutter speed for the shot you are trying to accomplish. Normally for shooting 60i footage that is going to be converted to 24p, I keep my camera at 1/60th of a second shutter speed. But if the motion you want to capture is fast and you want a clear slow-motion shot with lots of detail and little motion blur, then you need to bump up that shutter speed accordingly. You may find yourself shooting around 1/500th to 1/1,000th of a second, which is going to require more light or a wider aperture. But that’s nothing new if you’ve shot actual slow-motion footage before. Just the nature of the beast.

Some of the effects I like the most in the film are also pretty simple ones to accomplish, such as the shot of Emily (Brittany Fried) floating across a room in one of the main character’s hallucinations. It is simply a basic composite shot of the background without the action happening overlaid with Brittany standing on a dolly and being pulled through the shot. Simple trick, but effective. Of course, what makes the shot is Brittany’s acting, looking up while floating by and opening her mouth only to have water pour forth from it. Creepy and humorous at the same time, given the tone of the scene.

Another motion tracking shot I enjoy comes very early in the film, and is missed by most people. It’s just a simple detail in the frame. When Henry, the main character, walks into his kitchen at the start of the film, a note on the counter flutter and moves about unnaturally, then vanishes. The shot is tilting up and panning slightly right at the same time, so again, I had to motion track the movement in order to marry the note to the counter. Its a little detail that some people catch, and it helps establish how surrounded by his hallucinations Henry is.

The crew at work.

Director of photography Andrew Gilbert.

The final type of visual effects work I did for “Cold October” is the subtlest but the most time consuming. Since we shot the film on the Sony FX1 using its stock lens, having a selective depth of field was a hard thing to accomplish. When possible, we moved camera further from the subject and zoomed in. This give a bit of optical compression to the depth of field, and makes it easier to get the background out of focus. At times too, for close up shots, we would move the actors further away from the background. For one scene where Henry talks to Meagan (Rachel Cottom) outside, the actors were far enough apart that when doing over the shoulder shots, the shoulder in each frame was quite out of focus. This helped us have a more selective depth of field for that scene without any tricks.

But in other instances, this just didn’t happen. It is hard to have a selective depth of field with any stock zoom lens on a video camera, especially when doing wide shots. Thus, I went to work in Motion doing some rodoscope animation of mattes around characters in order to selectively place portions of shots a little more out of focus. This helped give the film a slightly more cinematic feel in places. Again, it’s subtle, but it’s one of those things you don’t want to call attention to. Selective depth of field is about guiding attention, not drawing attention to itself.

Color Correction

The final process the film went through for its look was color correction. For this we used Apple’s Color, which is part of the Final Cut Studio 2 bundle. Despite some early shaky reactions from at least one filmmaker I know who tested the program, I was quite pleased with the results. There are definitely things about Color that need some improvement (the lack of more than one “undo” and the inability to organize the windows anywhich way I want, just to name two that drive me crazy), so I look forward to subsequent versions of the program. Still, for the most part it was a pleasure to use.

We treated the footage with a cold color approach. We shot the footage usually slightly blue or neutral on set. The idea was to make the film a rather cold, bluish world in which Henry is fighting for his consciousness the whole time. We also increased the contrast in the footage—something that even with the CineGamma in the FX1, I always feel is needed in order to get a more film-like contrast. Especially when converting the footage from 60i to 24p, there’s a slight lightening of the footage that happens, so that even if you want the same level of contract and saturation you had before the conversion, you have to go back in and bump those things up in post. I think the only shots we didn’t increase the contrast in were night shots outside. According to one friend, Dan Kirkman, who was my cinematographer using the FX1 on the short film, “A Day Like Any Other,” that camera seems to generate the best shots outside at night if there are strong enough light sources. I think that mainly has to do with the built-in contrast in such shots.

Effects work done in Motion 3.

Editing in Final Cut Pro 6.

One important way we used Color was to add a bit of film grain to the whole movie. This grain was much more organic is nature, acting like the usual grain of an actual celluloid stock. It helped cover some of the noise that comes about when doing effects work to HDV. For all of you special effects enthusiasts out there, keep in mind that heavily compressed HD formats (while High Definition because of the number of pixels) lack significant color value information (that’s how they’re compressed). This makes them terrible candidates for heavy special effects work. In fact, I think I’m sort of crazy for trying. But then, what are you going to do when you’re boke? You do end up with digital noise in your frame. Our solution was to use the “key blur” tool in Color to help blur together digital artifacts on mostly solid colors, and to add the film grain over everything to blend things together in a more organic manner.

The film grain serves one more purpose. It was a subtle mood setter. I liked the way grain was used in the film Lost Souls. During more intense sequences of the film, the footage seemed to get grainer, adding a sort of tension to the action. So, we borrowed this idea and used it during Henry’s hallucinations. So, the more removed from reality Henry became, the more we increased the intensity of the grain effect. Again, it’s a subtle effect not meant to jump out at you. Sadly, it’s also an effect that’s totally lost to any of the viewers that have seen the film over the web during our special web-screening event. Web compression kills that kind of subtle detail. I even wonder how well one can pick up on it on DVD. But when we’ve projected the film in 1080i HD, that grain has looked great. I guess it’s just the nature of making a film with the big screen in mind.

Conclusion

In the end, I feel that for a film shot with an absolutely minimal budget on a compressed HD format, it does look good. I’ve seen a lot of short films out there, some made with the exact same camera, and I feel that “Cold October” looks better than most of those (but maybe I’m biased). I believe we took what we learned by making “Cellar Door” and improved upon it. While not a perfect film, I am proud of “Cold October” and am excited to see where it might gain some notice in the film festival world. The Ouat Media Film Festival Submission Service is currently submitting it to film festivals around the globe. We are in the early stages of the submission process, so it will still be a while before we know more about where “Cold October” might be playing.

Every filmmaking experience is something to build upon, and I’m privileged to be in the position of having two short films (drastically different in nature) completed and being submitted to film festival right now. Not long after completing post-production on “Cold October” I directed another short film called “Always Reaching.” This newer film too represents a major step forward technically for me, but that’s a different blog entry for later.

You can learn more about “Cold October” by going to coldoctoberfilm.webs.com.

An Exploration of the State of Christian Cinema (part two)

2008-09-21T17:23:00.017-04:00

“Society needs artists, just as it needs scientist, technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the faith, teachers, fathers and mothers, who ensure the growth of the person and the development of the community by means of that supreme art from which is ‘the art of education.’ Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place.”
- Pope John Paul II, from “Letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Artists.”

The Christian as Filmmaker

The lights go down. The projector rolls. Light, cast upon a screen, becomes something else entirely. Suddenly, it has a language all its own. An experience. What a moment ago was a strand of still images is now a living thing. It is transformed. A miracle of sorts.
And this miracle doesn’t stop there. As a medium, cinema is built upon conflict and resolution, upon failure and redemption. It is this way because cinema is a story-centric medium. What sets it apart from other means of storytelling is its unique experiential quality. Philosopher Colin McGinn (whom I’ve quoted on this blog before) connects this quality to an apparent strong relationship between the film viewing experience and the dreaming state of mind. McGinn writes in his book, The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact:

Perhaps our willingness to entertain sensory/affective fusion in the case of movies is preconditioned by our acquaintance with it in our dreams: we can so readily respond to it in the cinema because we are so familiar with it in our nighttime consciousness. . . . The kind of seeing we experience in the cinema is emotional seeing—the seeing of emotions with emotions. Eye and heart are locked inextricably together, just as they are in dreams. This is not disinterested, clinical seeing, but seeing charged with feeling. {1}

It should come as no surprise that such a medium might draw the attention of those with a deep and resounding faith. Cinema gathers from so many different disciplines, it becomes a sort of unified theory of art (or maybe a unified application of the arts). And in so doing, it opens up the experiential exploration of humanity to those who view it. From a Christian perspective, what’s not to like about this? Here is a medium that offers us the opportunity to experience the interaction of the divine and profane, a meeting ground of sorts, filled with contrast and the potential for redemption.

The central challenge of cinema as a medium (just as with any medium, really) is understanding its strengths and weaknesses. Some things work well in cinema, others do not. And still others seem to only work in movies and nowhere else. Pivotal to the filmmaker’s success is the understanding of visual metaphor to communicate to the audiences. Again, cinema has a language of it’s own. Learning to speak this language is the first (and arguably the most important) endeavor a filmmaker must undertake. Becoming fluent in this language takes years and focused effort. There are effective ways to communicate to an audience, and the filmmaker has to keep in mind that she or he is communicating through an experience.

Central to the struggle of many Christians in their efforts in filmmaking is a staggering lack of understanding of the visual language of cinema. Rather than present an experience that the audience can be caught up in, observing the unfolding of events like flies on a wall, such films all but preach directly to the audience, bypassing the most powerful aspects of cinema. I’ve wondered why this is for some time. An interesting observation by one of my professors at the Los Angeles Film Studies Center, Craig Detweiler, helped me start understanding this. He pointed out the correlation between the rich visual history of the Catholic Church and the number of influential Catholic filmmakers in the industry. Compare that to the almost complete absence of real visual elements of worship in many Protestant denominations (excluding maybe Lutherans, Episcopalians, and other “Catholic-Lite”—as Robin Williams might classify them—churches) and the much smaller number of Protestant filmmakers of influence. I think he’s on to something. Ingrained in the Catholic mind is the visual representations of faith, their visual metaphors, use of composition, structure, lighting, and texture.

Deweiler took it one step further: Consider the large number of Christian books and music flowing forth from Protestant churches. Why is this? That’s because these are elements that are regularly part of most Protestant worship services. The use of music and focus on verbal communication through reading scripture and the proclamation of the Gospel through preaching (a dominantly verbal medium) seems to more than accounts for this. I agree. And I think that what has happened is simply that young people growing up in these different traditions have tapped into that which they are most familiar with, what they’ve been regularly exposed to over the course of their lives. I don’t think it’s any surprise that there is a higher number of Catholics in filmmaking. As one who was raised in a Protestant denomination, I can definitely state that my visual education has all taken place out side of the church (some times even in spite of the church, sadly).

Recently, after reading a passage from a book by a well-known conservative Christian writer and radio personality, I was struck by a very sad thought. This particular Christian spokesman quoted the lyrics to a secular song and then proceeded to lambaste it for its devaluation of the institution of marriage. The problem with his assessment is that he completely missed the experimental nature of hearing a song. He completely overlooked the use of irony, subltly, and the act stating a view only to ultimately lament that such a view has come into dominance in our society. So, while I appreciate what this Christian spokesman was attempting to demonstrate, I think he missed the boat completely in appreciating the song he was drawing from. The sad thought that occurred to me as I wondered how he’d managed to “miss it by that much” was this: Are sermons making us dumber?

Now, before you skip to the end of this blog entry and write me an angry response, allow me to explain that I do attend church regularly, and find some value in most sermons. Having said this, allow me now to suggest that there is too much of an emphasis on sermons within the Protestant tradition. The issue here is that sermons (while often an experiential medium too—you sit in a pew and listen) lack subtlety. I can see it already, pastors who might be reading this, some of them my friends, rolling their eyes. “Of course they lack subtly, Mikel,” they might say. After all, sermons are supposed to be a clear proclamation of truth, no misunderstandings allowed.

Certainly not wanting to be misunderstood in your preaching is not a bad thing for any pastor. However, the issue comes down to how young Christian minds are trained to interact with the world around them. Many protestants I know have little to no exposure to any other mediums used for the dissemination of ideas other than sermons. And as I have already pointed out, sermons are of a rather straight-forward manner. What you hear is what you are meant to understand. This is fine for preaching. However, if people are not exposed intelligently to other mediums that present ideas in a more complex manner than sermons, I argue many such people become seriously handicapped when it comes to interacting with art. You see, most art is all about subtly, being open to multiple interpretations, even open to being misunderstood. The above-mentioned Christian spokesman was applying the rules of dissecting a sermon to his interpretation of the song he was writing about. What he didn’t take into account is that you cannot expect to approach an artistic medium and simply take it at face value as you might a sermon. The same song he was so frustrated by made me sad too, but not for the same reasons. Rather, in the lyrics, I could hear the songwriter’s lament that marriage had lost its meaning in his world. I could hear him calling out for some sort of hope in this matter. By using a seemingly direct and careless approach, the songwriter was pointing out how lamentable and damaging this loss of value is to marriage. This was no love song, afterall.

Let’s perform an experiment here: According to such rules as the above mentioned Christian spokesman used on that song, what is the message of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic, The Lord of the Rings? I know, rings of power are bad. They should be tossed in a volcano or something. Wow, glad we cleared that up.

Do you see what’s happened? We’re not even beginning to think metaphorically. You cannot approach art with this mentality. But so many Christians do. It is no wonder that even still the small liberal arts (though hardly a thing about it is liberal or truly tapped into the arts) Christian college I graduated from has a campus-wide ban on R-rated films (aside from a self-refuting exception for The Passion of the Christ). It is no wonder that many conservative Christians still feel apprehensive about films as a medium and can only officially approve of a movie “with a message” (even if they might view films regularly). Here’s what fellow Christian and filmmaker Scott Derrickson has to say about this: “Christians are not yet ready to elevate a film purely for its excellence in craft and subsequent entertainment value. Somehow, it’s still got to have content that services our Christian point of view, or it’s not worthy of our stamp of approval.” {2}

Maybe it is this mentality that has pushed me away from considering myself a “Christian Filmmaker.” After all, not only do I appreciate films that are not particularly derivative of my Christian worldview, I make films that are not necessarily proclaiming my faith. Until one can develop an appreciation for the medium on its own terms, there is no hope that one can become truly literate in cinema. One of the most frustrating conversations I still deal with on occasion is how I can appreciate a film that has swearing, immoral behavior, and other so-called “reprehensible” content and still consider myself a Christian. Certainly, I am not an advocate of every film that comes out (an awful lot of films are pretty bad for multiple reasons, including terrible sinful content). What I am saying is that evaluating a film purely by its MPAA rating is about as unsophisticated as film viewing gets.

So what does this mean to the current state of Christians as filmmakers? It means there is an awful lot of bagage to contend with for any new filmmakers coming out of the various Christian traditions. The truth is, if you are passionate about filmmaking, be prepared to step on some toes along the way. Be prepared to deal with some people never quite understanding what you’re doing. And be prepared to have some people become out-right angry with you for no damn good reason at all.

But there is hope! A new generation is upon us. The above quoted Derrickson represents one such example. In December, Derrickson has a major motion picture (the third he’s directed) being released in theaters. Recently, FOX featured a long preview for the film before a special encore presentation of the pilot for Fringe. Maybe you caught it. Derrickson’s remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still promises to be an engaging film. A major Hollywood production, starring major Hollywood stars, Derrickson’s work as a director is certainly in a place that not many openly Christian individuals have been allowed to venture thus far. Honestly, this probably has to do with Derrickson’s stated position that he’s not at all that interested in evangelizing through film. Here’s what he says on the topic:

I’m not interested in winning converts through film – because the gospel is foolishness, and foolishness makes for bad filmmaking. But I can’t ignore the fact that issues of faith and spirituality interest me more than anything else, so I’m not going to avoid them, especially when those issues are important to so many other people. I think that my work is usually an attempt to explore issues of faith from a unique perspective. When writing a script, I don’t set out with an agenda to push, but rather with questions to explore. And I must be willing to let the film take me someplace I hadn’t expected. If I really have faith that God may be involved in the creative process, then I shouldn’t be surprised when the work itself challenges what I think and believe. If I’m so arrogant as to think that I have a superior perspective that the world should share, or if I lack the humility to change my mind about spiritual issues in the course of creating, then I am destined to fail as both a Christian and as an artist. {2}

I think Derrickson is on to something here. Cinema is a great place for exploring spiritual issues, and we live in a spiritually curious and awake society. Maybe the broader masses are not interested in organized religion, as some observers of the post-modern trends have indicated (and I second that indication), but our culture is quite fascinated by the spiritual, seeking an understanding of the world we live in that takes into account more than purely modernist/scientific ideas of reality.

Derrickson’s not alone. There are other filmmakers in Hollywood that come from various Christian Traditions such as Denzel Washington, Howard Kazanjian, or Tom Shadyac. One such prominent Christian is Ralph Winter, involved in producing the X-Men films, Fantastic Four, Planet of the Apes, Star Trek III, IV, V and VI, and several other major Hollywood pictures. Winter has ventured into more distinctly Christian films, having produced the first Left Behind film, Thr3e (based on Christian author Ted Dekker’s novel), and Hangman’s Curse and The Visitation (both based on Christian author Frank Paretti’s novels), and is currently in pre-production for The Screwtape Letters (you know, the C. S. Lewis classic). Winter is a Hollywood insider, there’s no question about it. And he seems to be making the best of it. The Visitation works well as a horror film and has an audience. While not perfect (and what film is?) I did enjoy it. The important thing I see in Winter is that he seems very observant about the work he does. He’s willing to take risks on making more openly faith-oriented films, but he also seems to know when to step back (notice his lack of involvement in the second and third Left Behind films).

Here’s a little of what Winter has to say on the topic of his faith and filmmaking:

It's known at the studio what I stand for and who I am. But being a Christian certainly isn't something to lead with. [Successful filmmakers must] be the hip, avant-garde thing that's going to get movies made and be at the cutting edge of culture. [Christianity] is not what Hollywood sees as all that. {3}

Actually a friend of mine, Scott Derrickson, a Christian director, has a movie coming out called The Exorcism of Emily Rose [now on DVD]. He's a strong proponent that one of the best ways to discern the story of good and evil is through horror movies. And he says that's the clearest picture of what the Gospel is about because of good guys and bad guys. He's quite an eloquent defender of that idea and has written about it in Christianity Today. Not that everybody that consumes horror movies has thought through stuff to that level, but Scott has, and he is a pretty interesting, creative talent out there trying to make horror movies that have some substance to them. {4}

I think movies are best when they tell us stories that ask good questions and inspire us to go further. It's like a good sermon on Sunday morning: it inspires you to go back and look at the text and say, “I want to go further; I want to know more.” Movies that ask great questions are like that for us and are making a contribution to our culture. {5}

I think you get the picture. In fact, there’s plenty more I could draw from Winter on the topic, but I can’t do that here and encourage you to look up articles and interviews with Winter. He’s been interviewed quite bit, actually, and has quite a bit of wisdom to share.

Now the question certainly arises about methodology. How is a Christian supposed to function as filmmaker? I think the answer, like so much in Christian faith, is unique to the individual. After all, God designs us with different talents, and fills us with different passions. I think He does this for a reason. A lot is made of having a “calling” in Christian circles. I think there’s some truth to this. Many people are out-right called by God to work in various areas of culture and ministry. However, a lot of us never really feel that distinct sense of calling as a lot of other people in the Church. I think that’s because God has given us various gifts and talents He would like to see us develop. The question becomes, how do you want to serve God?

That’s very much how I feel about filmmaking. I sense no calling to make specific films. What I do sense is a hunger to tell stories that matter, to worship my Creator through art, and to impact positively the people I work with. In fact, this last point is a pretty big deal. In speaking with friend and fellow filmmaker, Jedidiah Burdick, he pointed out the importance of often just being there with people on a film set and being salt and light. Maybe you’re not making a film that presents the story of salvation, but anyone who’s worked on a feature film (or even many short films) before knows the potential for a tight, family-like, environment that can develop on the set if guided by people who value that kind of connection. Being at the helm of a film is about more than just the movie you end up making, but about the people you work with along the way! I’ve learned this only by experience.

So back the methodology question . . . I don’t think there’s a prescription for films Christians should be making. Some, like Scott Derrickson, might be making horror films incredibly thought provoking horror films. Others, like Tom Shadyac, might be making hilarious comedies filled with heart-felt truth. I see a wide range here. In fact, a careful reading of the Bible reveals quite the graphic “R-rated” (more like NC-17) material we Christians are supposed to draw inspiration from. {6} Want I might suggest is that any Christian seeking to work in filmmaking, or television for that matter, should carefully examine Scripture and ask tough questions about why such stories are there and what we are to learn from them. Cinema, just as many stories (and parables) in Scripture, presents the opportunity to explore the human condition in unique ways and raise questions about who we are, why we’re here, and what value this life has.

I believe that in many ways, the strongest films are those that present an experience and allow the viewers to question what they’ve seen. They raise the questions in the audience’s mind, present a distinct experience of humanity and the Devine, and allow the Holy Spirit to do the rest. More Believers should be prepared to interact with these ideas, taking the conversation about such films to a deeper level. It is a exiting and engaging thing. We are but at the brink of truly engaging this medium.

I am interested in stories that explore universal questions and themes. I look for stories that have spiritual pointers or markers that will speak to people on a large scale. Film is a great way to examine questions, but not necessarily to answer those questions.
- Ralph Winter. {7}

End Notes:

{1} Colin McGinn, The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact. Pantheon Books, New York, NY. © 2005. Pg 105.
{2} Take from “Raising Hell,” an interview with Scott Derrickson on The New Pantagrual, pg 4
{3} “The Moral of the Story: an interview with Ralph Winter.” Religion and Liberty Magazine, Vol 15, No. 2. Canada. Pg 3.
{4} “The Moral of the Story: an interview with Ralph Winter.” Religion and Liberty Magazine, Vol 15, No. 2. Canada. Pg 12.
{5} “The Moral of the Story: an interview with Ralph Winter.” Religion and Liberty Magazine, Vol 15, No. 2. Canada. Pg 12 - 13.
{6} “I aks people of faith to consider what rating the Bible might generate if filmed verse by verse. Since the Bible would be lucky to earn anything less than an NC-17, I will move past issues of content to the central question of movies and their greater meanings.” – Craig Detweiler, from his chapter on movies in A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture by Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor. Baker Book, © 2003. Pg 158.
{7} “The Christian Behind 'X-Men'” by Kris Rasmussen, published on Beliefnet (www.bleliefnet.com): http://www.beliefnet.com/story/192/story_19211_1.html.